


Workout

by lheadley



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Chubby, Fat Shaming, M/M, Massage, Masturbation, Physical exertion, Sex eventually, Slow Build, Tears, chubby!Stiles, quite a lot of fluff it seems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-24 07:10:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lheadley/pseuds/lheadley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles might have gained a few pounds over the summer, what with the comfort eating to ease the pain that is Lydia Martin, and with no lacross practice to keep him in shape. But Derek is going to make sure he gets the workout he needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Puppy fat

“Just another typical night at the Beacon Hills nature reserve” Stiles thought, with a poor attempt at irony that came out more like petulance, even in his own head. And Scott had pretty much cornered the market in petulance, so he had better stop thinking that way. What nature there had been, at least of the fauna variety, had long since disappeared for safer ground. What nature remained was the supernatural variety – an omega that was not playing by the rules if the evidence was any judge. And since Derek had graciously ceded the nature reserve to Scott as his pack territory that meant that the presence of the omega was Scott’s problem. Which meant of course it was Stiles’s problem. When had Scott ever solved a problem on his own, without Stiles to walk him through it? Stiles shuddered slightly at some of the problems Stiles had had to walk Scott through in the earlier stages of his relationship with Allison. 

So, eleven o’clock on a warm summer night and Stiles was not where he should be – watching a Star Wars marathon and attempting to work his way through a monster pile of Reese’s Pieces as a palliative to Lydia’s throwing his brilliant ten year plan completely off schedule. No, Stiles was stuck scattering out handfuls from a bag full of mountain ash, humorously labelled “magic fairy dust” by his own fair hand, while shuffling around backwards in front of the entrance to the cave where Scott’s sense of smell told them the omega was lurking. Scott was also lurking, but some way back in the woods, ready to ambush the omega when he exited along the only route the mountain ash would allow. Stiles straightened himself up to ease a crick in his back, before bending over again to continue his ash trail. 

“Ouch” Stiles yelped, wincing as his Batman belt buckle pinched into his stomach under his “stud muffin” T-shirt. That was the third time this evening, Stiles thought ruefully. It is almost enough to put him off the Batman belt buckle – almost, but not quite, because the Batman belt buckle was awesome, and fashion comes with a price. Lydia had told him so (the fashion - price thing not the Batman buckle being awesome thing. Lydia had no appreciation of the really fine things in life, like Batman belt buckles. Or Stiles). 

Apparently the price of fashion had just gone up. Stile’s muted yelp (he could have sworn it was more a sotto voce exclamation of pain, practically silent) seemed to have been loud enough to wake the sleeping omega. And everyone knew that it was best to let sleeping werewolves lie. So the price of wearing the Batman belt buckles now appeared to be three red welts near his waistband, and being turned into a werewolf chew toy at some point in the not too distant future. Perhaps Lydia’s fashion sense was more unerring than Stiles had supposed.

There were at least twenty yards to go before the mountain ash trap-ambush scheme was complete, and Stiles knew that twenty yards was going to be beyond his “wish upon a star” ability to fill a void. Not that he had time to be wishing anything, because the omega had his scent and was moving steadily towards him. Somewhere behind him Stiles heard Scott growl out “Stiles, run.” Scott’s alpha voice was still a work in progress - just like when Scott’s voice had started to break a few years back and he had alternated between bass and falsetto for three hilarious months. This was probably not something Stiles should have been reflecting on at that precise moment, all things considered. More pressing matters were at hand. In fact, and possibly for the first time in their twelve years of friendship, Scott may have made a good point. Stiles scrambled up the hill and started running in the general direction of where Scott was supposed to be lurking. 

A hundred yards on and the pungent odour of an omega that had not been introduced to the merits of mouthwash was wafting on the gentle summer night time breeze. Stiles put on a spurt of speed as Scott suddenly blurred past him on his left. Stiles slumped to the ground in grateful relief, clutching a stitch in his side. He was so preoccupied with getting some much needed oxygen into his protesting lungs that it took a moment to register that another alpha had joined the fray – a leather clad Sourwolf of an alpha, Stiles noted. Stiles leant back onto the leaves of the forest floor, and waited for the inevitable conclusion of the fight.

The fight did not last long. A minute of yelping – almost piteous yelping, Stiles thought, before remembering that the yelper had wanted to rip him open moments earlier – and it was all over. There was the sound of two alphas walking back up the hillock towards him. With his breathing now under control, Stiles pushed himself up into a sitting position and cast an approving glance in their direction.

“Well done boys. I should have brought you a reward. A Scooby snack or something. Or a Scotty snack, maybe? I’ll remember next time.”

Two pairs of eyes briefly glowed red in the night. 

“How about an ear rub?” There had never been a limit Stiles was not prepared to push, and the wide world of canine humour had too many possibilities. He had not even gotten to the Lassie genre yet.

“Stiles you idiot, what the hell was that?” Scott started with a growl but he somewhat ruined the effect by ending up with a squeak. Yep, the alpha voice definitely still needed work. “Why were you shrieking out like that? And why the hell didn’t you run when I told you to?”

Stiles drew himself up with dignity – or as much dignity as he could muster while seated on a forest floor, possibly with twigs in his newly long hair. “I did not shriek. I may have ejaculated a quiet oath, but I did not shriek. And as soon as you started squeaking at me like a Pekinese on helium” (point to Stiles, he thought, with a bonus for the dog reference) “I started running as fast as I could. Forgive me if I do not have the bounding bunny running capabilities of a werewolf. Not all of us can be blessed with such natural grace.”

Derek’s face was suddenly leaning towards him, and Stiles felt the alpha was regretting the lack of a wall he could pin Stiles against. “Hey Sourwolf”, Stiles grinned. “Why are you here? I thought this was Scott’s territory? I mean, shouldn’t you have a passport, or safe conduct pass or something before encroaching? And I know you have none of those things, because I as Scott’s consigliere would have issued it”.

“I came because Scott howled for help, after you had done shrieking” Derek rumbled – and Stiles noted that Derek’s alpha voice had no problems with pitch, tone or general ability to sound pissed-off with an undercurrent of menace. “And Scott is right, why the hell didn’t you run?”

Derek paused in the midst of his general tone of hostility as he glanced down at Stiles, taking in his somewhat dishevelled appearance, his blue T-shirt darkened with sweat and sticking to his body. “I can smell the exertion on you. You are out of shape”.

“My shape is awesome, thanks very much”. Stiles was nettled by Derek getting so personal. OK, since lacrosse training had ended for the summer he had not done that much in the way of organised physical activity, running away from rogue omegas aside. But Stiles ate healthy food with his dad every evening. True Stiles normally had a bag or two of chips, and some curly fries, or maybe some Reese’s Pieces while researching on the web after dinner, but that was brain food and totally necessary. Occasionally it might have been Lydia mitigating comfort eating, but Stiles would not admit that, not now, not ever. And Stiles had stopped sporting the buzz cut hairstyle because he wanted to, not because it was starting to make his face look pudgy. Stiles was first line for lacrosse, for goodness sake, and for a human he looked pretty darned good.

Without warning Derek’s slightly clawed hand grabbed the hem of Stiles’s T-shirt and pulled it up ten inches. “Puppy fat?” he sneered. Stiles glanced down. The red welts from his treacherous Batman belt buckle were fading against his white skin. There was a certain slight overhang of pale flesh above his waistband, which in a bad light (like moonlight, or moonlight in a forest, or moonlight in a forest in the shadow of an over-muscled alpha werewolf whose abs had abs) might possibly look a little like a belly roll. But to be accused of being fat was going too far. 

“I am about to go through a growth spurt” Stiles snapped, because this was all a little uncomfortable, and he was rather aware of Derek’s knuckles rubbing against his bare skin.

“Out, rather than up I think”. Derek was smiling the evil sarcastic leer that always riled Stiles, while at the same time making his heart beat more rapidly. “You are a liability like this, Stiles. If you are going to run with the wolves, you at least need to be capable of running. We don’t have time to hang around waiting for you to catch up”.

“You don’t have to hang around at all” Stiles was getting angry now, pushing himself to standing and shoving his T shirt back down (while surreptitiously pushing himself a little way back from Derek at the same time. Though as Derek’s leer seemed to widen in the moonlight, Stiles might not have been as surreptitious as he had thought). “I am Scott’s pack, not yours, and Scott has no problem with my awesome level of fitness.”

“Dude”. Scott was doing his kicked-puppy look that generally accompanied the imparting of bad news. “You have gotten a bit chubby these last few weeks. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, but Derek has a point”

“Stupid werewolves with stupid werewolf muscles” thought Stiles, as he pulled his damp T-shirt away from his body (because it was more comfortable that way, and for no other reason. Absolutely not because it was sticking to his stomach. Or his love handles. Which he didn’t have). 

“Get fit, or get out of the way” snapped Derek. “I’ll train you.”

Now that he was standing, Stiles was in a position to flail without hindrance. He took full advantage of it. “You will do nothing of the sort” he said, accompanied with an arm movement that had to be a form of aerobic exercise on its own. “I am in great shape, and if I train with anyone it will be with my own pack.”

Derek snorted out a derisive sound. “When has Scott ever gotten you to do anything you did not want to do?” He turned to the other alpha. “If you can babysit the betas for a week, I’ll take Stiles in hand. Isaac will be happy, aside from anything else”.

Scott looked a little confused at that last reference – Stiles groaned internally at the thought of another “walking through” session of a personal nature that he would have to schedule with Scott. Really, Scott had the emotional insensibility of a potato at times. But then, to Stiles’s horror, Scott shrugged. “OK” he said. Turning to Stiles, he pulled out the kicked-puppy look again. “It’ll just be a few days, Stiles. There is an alpha pack out there, we can’t afford to be anything other than fighting fit. You are in pretty good shape really. You just need to get back into top form.”

Derek laughed. “Even a human must be able to hear that lie Scott.” He turned to Stiles. “You need to improve your stamina, muscle tone, and lose ten pounds at least”. Derek suddenly lunged and grabbed at the Stile’s T-shirt just above his belt buckle. “This” he said “is going to go”. With a repeat of his sadistic leer – seriously, Stiles thought, it was almost a trademark - Derek let go of Stile’s soft and increasingly bruised stomach. “Be at my house at 0800 tomorrow. In training gear.”


	2. Prokofiev and plumpness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles was pretty sure he was amongst the deserving. Which Derek and Scott most certainly were not. They deserved to be in the dog house for making rude comments about the stupendousness that was Stiles. No Scotty snacks for them.

Stiles awoke without knowing why. Summer vacation was no time for an alarm to be set, and yet from somewhere he could hear Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf”, heavy on the French horns and coming out at an insistent volume. Stiles knew he wasn’t dreaming – he had been dreaming beforehand, and Prokofiev had definitely not been the soundtrack to his subconscious. Something very different from Soviet era children’s classical music had been the soundtrack to his subconscious, Stiles was sure. Something a lot more primal and perhaps involving his name being growled repeatedly in an oddly familiar manner. There was a certain firmness in the region of his groin that seemed to validate his recollection of his dream. 

Reluctantly Stiles sat up in bed. A chip packet fluttered off his sheet - sadly empty, Stiles noted. It was family size, but after the adrenaline burst of the previous night it had seemed deserved. Someone had deserved Scooby snacks, or perhaps had deserved Scotty snacks (could he trademark that name?), and given all the exertion he had gone through Stiles was pretty sure he was amongst the deserving. Which Derek and Scott most certainly were not. They deserved to be in the dog house for making rude comments about the stupendousness that was Stiles. No Scotty snacks for them.

As consciousness returned, Stiles remembered that he had changed his ringtone for Derek the previous night. The Prodigy’s “Run with the wolves” had seemed in poor taste as Derek’s signature tone, after his wholly inappropriate comments on Stiles physical prowess. Stiles had gone with classical, and the Peter reference was just a bonus. But that meant that Derek was calling him, and at 9 o’clock in the morning. Derek never called Stiles, and it was simply inhuman to attempt to get in touch with a teenager at that time of day during the summer. Stiles was damned if he was going to answer. The Sourwolf was not his alpha, after all.

Prokofiev fell silent. Stiles slumped back against his pillows and allowed his hand to drift idly down under the sheet from his chest, over his treasure trail (furriness was not a unique attribute of werewolfkind), and towards the prospect of some quality early morning entertainment. He reached the slightly frayed elastic of the boxer shorts he slept in, and was slowly rubbing his thumb northwards from the edge of the boxers back up over an inch or so of his trail, taking in a gentle swelling of his stomach that was no doubt just the slightly soft muscle of his abs. Breathing a little more heavily Siles contemplated a change of direction. He was just starting to move his thumb gently south from his waistband towards a rather different and rapidly burgeoning sort of swelling, when his Samsung phone blasted out the Lassie theme tune. Scott was calling. A dilemma was presenting itself. Stiles’s dick was definitely calling for attention with some insistence, but so (it appeared) was his best friend.

Stiles groaned and rolled over onto his front, grinding his hips into his mattress by way of a promise. There was a slightly crunchy quality to the mattress, perhaps combined with a salt and vinegar odour. He should be more careful about sleeping while eating. Stiles made a few blind grabbing gestures with his hand until it connected with the Samsung phone by his bed. If Scott was calling at this ungodly hour it must be serious. Scott was even less of a morning person than he was, unless Allison needed him. And if Allison needed Scott, Scott would not be bothering Stiles. Or so Stiles hoped. Because he really did not want to be researching that area of werewolfdom again. The phone rang off just as his hand got to it, and he glanced blearily down at the screen. There was voicemail. Stiles dialled.

“Stiles, where the hell are you? Get your fat butt out of bed. Get over here. I said 0800.” The message continued on in the same ill-tempered and staccato vein. 

That was not Scott. That was the growl of an overly grouchy werewolf. That was Derek, and moreover it was a pissed-off Derek. He seemed to be biting the ends of his sentences off with his fangs, purely to give vent to some mysterious sense of anger that was doubtless directed at Stiles. Stiles could swear he could hear glowering and the sound of eyebrows being pulled together over the phone. He rolled back onto his back, put the phone on loudspeaker and played the message again. There was no particular reason to do so as the message had been clear enough the first time, but Stiles told himself he should be researching the alpha tone – purely to help Scott in developing his growl. As Derek’s voice message started to replay Stiles let his right hand travel down his treasure trail again.

The message ended with characteristic abruptness. Stiles contemplated replaying another time, just for research purposes of course. The alpha tone was elusive, he needed to get to grips with its complex cadences. Particularly the inflection and growling when Derek said “Stiles”. That was something he should study in more detail. Perhaps make a recorded loop of. Replaying would involve reaching across to the phone with his left hand, as his right hand was required on urgent business elsewhere, but just as he was about to move the Lassie theme came back. Stiles groaned again – Scott seemed determined to destroy the simple pleasures of his life. He picked up, reluctantly right handed to facilitate answering, and muttered a drowsy “What is it Scott?” in the general direction of the handset. Stiles was feeling lethargic; or if not exactly lethargic he was feeling something that was not really compatible with a long conversation with his best friend. 

“Dude, you are late for Derek”. Scott was sounding slightly frazzled, and Stiles could not work out why – until he heard the growls of a pack of unruly betas echoing off what sounded like the warehouse walls. “Get over there”.

Stiles started to protest. “It’s too early, and it is wholly unnecessary. It was one short sprint last night, and everything turned out fine. I am in great shape...”

Scott cut him off. “Stiles, you need this. You need to get out of your room, stop moping about Lydia, stop comfort eating, get some fresh air and exercise. Go.” That was another attempt at an alpha tone from Scott, but once again it was not especially impressive. Not Pekinese, admittedly, but no more than a Jack Russell in terms of ferocity. Although a Jack Russell could inflict a certain amount of ankle damage, as Stiles knew from his one abortive attempt at a paper round several years earlier. But still. Jack Russell. Not really the impressive alpha tone one aimed for in one’s pack leader. Stiles was really going to have to put vocal projection on his “to do” list with Scott. The call abruptly terminated with a muttered “Shit!” from Scott, and a background noise that to Stile’s trained ears sounded like one beta being thrown by a second beta on top of a third beta in order to goad their babysitting alpha.

Stiles was a realist. If Scott was already babysitting betas, and he had had two calls from his alpha and one from the alpha next door (or from the alpha in the territory next door) by 9 o’clock in the morning, he was not going to be able to get out of this. They would hound him (hah!) until he showed up. He groaned a final time. It had been a big morning for groaning, but not in the way he normally enjoyed. His dick was already subsiding in his boxers. Stiles pulled himself out of bed and stumbled in the direction of his shower. His morning’s entertainment was ruined anyway. Apparently the blood was going to be pumping through his veins for a different purpose now. He reasoned that it would just be an hour’s running around, and he could come back and lie on his bed in his boxer shorts with the fan on to combat the summer heat, and then spend the rest of the day working his way through a small stash of chocolatey goodness he had kept purposefully hidden from his dad. Maybe finally get round to the Star Wars marathon. Definitely Star Wars. Not Batman. He was not in the mood for Batman for some reason.


	3. No pain, no gain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek said nothing, but started walking purposefully into the woods at a brisk pace. Stiles huffed his displeasure, but set off after him. After all, how bad could a walk in the woods be? Unless there was some Little Red Riding Hood scenario going on. Stiles made a mental note to avoid commenting on the bigness of Derek’s eyes. Or the bigness of his ears. Or the bigness of his biceps. Or the bigness of his… well, best not to comment on the bigness of anything right now.

It was getting on for ten o’clock when Stiles pulled up in his Jeep outside the Hale house. Stiles had felt there was no point facing this on an empty stomach, when there was cold pizza available in the fridge as a breakfast option. Anyway, if Stiles had not eaten the pizza there was a risk his father would, and Stiles did not want that on his conscience. A leather-jacketed Derek was glowering a little way in front of the doorway. Stiles paused briefly to contemplate how he could bear to stand there in bright sunshine, projecting angst and dark cowhide like a miniature black hole. Seriously, it was the middle of one of the hottest summers in years. How deep did the dude’s leather fetish go? 

Stiles hauled himself out of the Jeep and slouched up towards the entrance, clad far more sensibly in grey sweatpants and a lightweight red hoodie. The sweatpants had an elasticated waist, which avoided the whole belt buckle / stomach pinching issue, and unlike his jeans did not seem to have shrunk in the wash recently. The hoodie was just the first thing to hand in his wardrobe, and did not show bloodstains. Bloodstain-disguising clothes were always a plus when meeting with Derek.

“Where the hell have you been?” Derek’s charm level seemed to have dropped another notch or two – Stiles had not thought that would have been possible “And why the hell did you drive?”

Stiles looked a little blank at that. “Why wouldn’t I drive? I always drive.”

“Tomorrow, you run”.

Startled, Stiles glanced askance at Derek. “What do you mean tomorrow? This is a one day thing, right?”

Derek looked disparagingly at him. “From this” – he gestured towards Stile’s midriff with a short sharp movement – God, even his gestures were staccato - “to fit in a day? You are a month of hard work. Get your fat ass inside”.

Stiles stomped past Derek, and he could feel the Derek looking at the seat of his sweatpants as if to underscore his final words as he pushed into the barren hallway. Glowering like that should require a license, in Stiles’s opinion. His sweatpants were going to bear scorch marks. Stiles could swear he felt a breeze of air as he passed too – almost as if a brooding alpha with large hands had made to slap Stiles’s pert derrier and had pulled back at the last minute… But it must be Stiles’s imagination. The breeze would have been a sudden freak gust of wind from one of the many holes in the walls. Though it struck Stiles that the wind had hitherto been remarkably still. Stiles turned to face his tormentor with his arms folded across his chest. 

“Right”. Derek’s sadistic leer was back in force. “Time for the weigh-in. Go and stand on the scales”. Derek gestured - again with the staccato movements - to a new looking set of bathroom scales in a corner near the staircase. Stiles tried glowering back at him, though he was painfully aware that his glowering was just a pale imitation of what Derek was capable of. He was in the presence of a master – some kind of sensei of snarling who probably had to practice for hours at a time in front of his mirror, while flexing his absurd werewolf muscles and glaring his abs into shape through force of mind alone, as sweat ran down the manly contours of his back… Stiles flinched out of his daydream as Derek made a sudden shift towards him, and then shuffled in the direction indicated. 

“All right, Sourwolf. No need to get the fangs out”. He stood on the scales, watching the dial settle while leaning forward to obscure the reading from prying eyes. “There, 150lbs”. 

Derek was suddenly breathing over his shoulder. Stiles could smell the earthy, wood smoke scent of him, far closer than he was used to in the normal course of events. This degree of proximity normally involved wall slamming or steering wheel head-butting. Or occasionally swimming, but then the chlorine tended to obscure the smoky smell. Stiles had only started picking up on the scent of werewolves since the whole magic pixie dust deal had kicked in, but Derek’s scent seemed even stronger than normal. It also seemed to have a new and slightly odd quality. The smell almost felt hotter, which was clearly an absurd thought as smell had no temperature. Though Stiles might just have been projecting the weather onto his olfactory senses. 

Derek seemed in a mood to be picky about small details. “You must have problem seeing past your gut. That says 165lbs, not 150lbs. You need to lose 17lbs”. Stiles shrank out from underneath the alpha’s looming presence behind him, and got off the scales. 

“I was subtracting the weight of my clothes”

“Your clothes do not weigh 15lbs.” The leer came back “but if you want to take them off and try again, be my guest.” There was another surge of that Derek but somehow heated Derek scent. Stiles’s heart gave a quick flutter that he was absolutely going to pass off as irritation if asked. For a moment he was tempted to take off his hoodie, which had to be worth a couple of pounds at least, but he had not bothered wearing a T-shirt today (there were claw marks in the T-shirt he had worn the previous night and he had not wanted to risk more wardrobe malfunctions than were absolutely necessary). Stiles was pretty sure that removing his hoodie would just provoke further unwelcome and unnecessary comment. He lapsed back into a sullen silence. A temporary silence, because after all he was Stiles, but still. He hoped it got the message across.

Derek was removing his leather jacket with the patented combination of deliberation and menace that seemed to characterise all of his actions. Stiles adopted a false pose of startled amazement. “It comes off? I never knew that it came off. I thought it was welded to your body or something?” Not his best attempt at sarcasm, Stiles was prepared to admit, but it was still the crack of dawn (or approaching 10.30) and anything that might delay the forthcoming torture was worth the attempt.

Derek’s sadistic leer was still in place. “Outside.”

“Seriously, dude, can you go outside without the leather? Won’t you burn up in the daylight, or something? Isn’t the leather jacket a cut down version of the whole Spike thing? Are you, like, junior Spike? Perhaps you should peroxide your hair…”

Stiles’s witticisms were cut short, just as he was getting into his stride. Derek had grabbed him by the scruff of his hoodie, and all but threw him out of the front door.

“We are going to start slow, given the state you are in.” 

Stiles stood at the foot of the broken steps to the porch, watching as Derek ran lightly back to the house before returning with a small haversack into which he was pushing a couple of large bottles of water. He threw the whole thing to Stiles. “Put this on”.

“Why me?” Stiles was coming close to whining, and whining was really Isaac’s territory (along with whimpering), but it did seem unfair. “You have the werewolf muscles, you carry the stupid pack”. It wasn’t even a good backpack – just a plain green canvas thing. There was not a Spiderman logo in sight. 

“The water is for you. And the straps are too small for me to wear”. There was a definite smugness to Derek’s tone – an unusual and unwelcome variant on his normal undercurrent of menace. Stiles moodily pushed his arms through the shoulder straps, possibly in a somewhat inelegant manner. The hood of his hoodie seemed to become entangled, and it took him a couple of minutes and some tugging to get things right. Derek’s smugness was rolling off him in waves now. Stiles was getting irritated with this. Derek was enjoying the whole situation far too much – although glancing at Derek’s taut physique, now evident through the thin cotton of his grey T shirt, Stiles might be prepared to concede the impracticality of the werewolf getting his arms through the backpack straps. Perhaps Derek had a legitimate reason to avoid carrying the heavy baggage. Particularly in addition to all the emotional baggage he was carrying anyway. But he did not like the idea of needing two large bottles of water. If they were starting off slow, why was so much rehydration needed? And why could said rehydration not come in the form of some tasty, non-caffeinated but sparkling and sugared beverage?

“Follow me”.

“In your dreams, wolfman.”

Derek flashed a hint of canine in Stiles’s direction. “Do as you are told”.

Stiles sighed. “Always such a bossy-paws. Where are we going?”

Derek said nothing, but started walking purposefully into the woods at a brisk pace. Stiles huffed his displeasure, but set off after him. After all, how bad could a walk in the woods be? Unless there was some Little Red Riding Hood scenario going on. Stiles made a mental note to avoid commenting on the bigness of Derek’s eyes. Or the bigness of his ears. Or the bigness of his biceps. Or the bigness of his… well, best not to comment on the bigness of anything right now.

For the first forty minutes or so, Stile’s strategy was to keep up a steady if somewhat one-sided conversation. Stiles had plenty of conversation – educational, witty, generally delightful conversation which would help to pass the time. More importantly, he knew that this was the readiest way of irritating Derek. And an irritated Derek would be more likely to give up on this unnecessary remodelling of Stiles’s fine physique. Stiles covered an eclectic range of topics: he ran through lacrosse, Scott and Allison’s epic romance, Buffy, brooding anti-heroes, and the unfair advantage supernatural creatures had in the way of muscles. He considered himself an expert on this last point, having spent forty minutes contemplating the muscles of Derek’s back and shoulders as they stretched rhythmically under his T-shirt. There may have been some brief contemplation of the firm muscles of Derek’s ass as they pressed against the tight denim of his jeans, but only when they were walking up hill and Derek (being in front) naturally brought his ass into Stiles’s line of vision. There was no overt ogling going on. Absolutely not. 

After forty minutes of quality Stiles conversation, punctuated by four growls and what might just possibly have been a huff of amusement from Derek, Stiles was starting to feel the effects of the hike. Derek had not slackened the pace in the slightest, and did not even seem to have broken into a sweat. Stiles’s sweatpants, meanwhile were turning from grey to near black from his waist to his thigh with his exertions. The ‘sweat’ part of the sweatpants name seemed le mot juste, and the fabric was clinging to him in a really unpleasant way. Stile’s hoodie was just a sodden red rag. There was stitch in his side that seemed (if possible) worse than the omega induced stitch of the previous evening. 

Suddenly, Derek halted. Stiles collapsed in relief onto a nearby tree stump, and started clawing feebly for the back pack. Derek did not seem to notice the state he was in. “Your heart rate just reached the upper boundary of its optimal fat burning range” he said, before lapsing into silence.

Stiles was too busy gulping precious, precious water to react immediately, but surfacing with something of a gasp after a moment or two he panted out “you are listening to my heart rate? Rude.”

“The only alternative was listening to your conversation.”

“Dude, seriously? Do you know how lucky you are to have this much one to one Stiles-time?” The necessity of breathing and rehydrating prevented further remonstration.

“Five minutes, then we move.”

Stiles managed an eye roll over the top of water bottle, accompanied by a one armed wave of his arm. It would have been a flail, but that seemed too much effort given the warmth of the morning, so it ended up being a controlled flap of disparagement. Derek ignored him, though in a seemingly pointed manner, and continued staring off into middle distance.

The pattern was repeated, at irregular intervals, for the next three hours. It was a little after 2 o’clock when the Hale house finally hove into view on the horizon, and by that point Stiles’s conversation was reduced to an undercurrent of muttered curses interspersed with panting. Of course, the muttered nature of the curses did not prevent Derek from hearing, and Stiles knew that full well. He took as much advantage of it as his laboured breathing would allow. 

Finally, in front of the porch of the house, Stiles shrugged his way out of the embrace of the green canvas haversack, without any hoodie entanglement this time, and collapsed onto his back. 

“Dude, that was too much. I do not have freakin’ werewolf super strength. I am human – with an awesome line in sarcasm, and an adorably cute face – but still human. And this human is about to die of heat exhaustion if you don’t put your werewolf speed to good use and run and get me an ice-cream or something.”

Derek was out of Stiles’s line of vision, but there was a snort of derision from somewhere behind his head. “The last thing you need is extra calories. But if you are too hot, I can sort that out.”

There was a rush of air, and Derek was suddenly sitting on Stiles’s waist, knees on either side of Stiles’s hips, smiling down at him with slightly elongated canines. 

“Derek, what the hell?” Stiles’s complaints were somewhat high pitched in tone, and he was aware of the faintest of stirrings in his sweatpants as Derek’s weight pressed down on him. Derek’s smile widened, and his hand came up in front of Stiles’s face with its claws out.

“I would keep really, really still if I were you Stiles.”

Every instinct Stiles had told him to squirm his way out, but he was transfixed by the bright blue of Derek’s eyes. There was a confusion of swiping movements, and Stiles was rolled left and right a couple of times. Derek then wriggled down Stiles’s legs to pin his ankles to the ground, which promoted a further noted but somewhat exhausted expression of interest from the interior of Stiles’s sweatpants. Derek wriggling was such an uncharacteristic motion, and it felt oddly pleasing. When Stiles was less tired he might investigate that idea in a little more detail. 

“Keeping very still, Stiles”.

There was a repeat of the swiping and rolling combination. Derek stood up. Stiles continued to lie on the ground, the stillest he had been since the whole Kanima paralysation saga. Derek came into his line of vision again “On your feet. Now.”

Stiles was not quite sure what had just happened, and not sure he was capable of moving, when Derek’s hand was once again on the scruff of his hoodie (really, werewolves and the scruff of his neck. What is it with these creatures and necks? That was supposed to be a vampire trademark, surely? Was this the whole junior Spike thing?). Stiles found himself hauled into a standing if slightly sagging position.

“There you go”. Smug Derek was back. Stiles was bemused.

“There I go what?”

Derek gave Stiles a shake. The arms of his red hoodie fell away, as did two thirds of one of the legs of his sweatpants. “My mistake” – Derek’s claws were out again, there was another swift motion and the major part of the second leg of the sweatpants joined its partner on the ground.

“What have you just done?” Stiles was incensed. It was bad enough dealing with the damage to his wardrobe in the line of duty, without having supposedly allied alphas taking their claws to his clothes. His hoodie was sleeveless, and sides open to mid rib level or even lower. His sweatpants covered maybe half his thighs. True, there was something of a refreshing breeze blowing about him now, and he was grateful for that, but even so.

“You wanted to cool down. Believe me, I would far rather not have to contemplate your spare tyre” Derek smirked – there was no other word for it, and it was a facial expression that made Stiles think wistfully of the leer. Derek suddenly grabbed at the right side of Stiles’s torso somewhere between his ribs and waist through one of the newly created vents in the hoodie (with a declawed hand, Stiles was relieved to feel) and jiggled his hand up and down in a wholly unnecessary way. 

“You get half an hour to cool down, then we start on upper body strength” – Derek’s other hand reached out to grab Stile’s left bicep. The hot smell was coming off Derek again, but Stiles was too shocked to comment.

“I’m done” he managed to croak out.

“Nowhere close, fat boy”. Derek’s sadistic leer was back. “You will be begging me to stop before the afternoon is finished.”


	4. Plenty of pain. Seemingly no gain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Derek did not wear underwear, would that make a difference to whether he had a tan line when he was naked? It would mean it would take less time to get him naked. Stiles’s heart rate fluttered somewhat faster, but clearly this was nothing to do with the purely academic thoughts he was having about the sadistic Sourwolf of an alpha. He was probably having a heart attack from the inhuman amount of physical exertion he had undertaken that day.

A little after 6 o’clock in the evening Stiles’s jeep pulled up in front of his house. His dad’s cruiser had gone – he was on the night shift. Stiles leaned painfully forward, and cut the engine. He stayed with his head leaning on the steering wheel, breathing heavily and waiting for the leaden feeling to fade. It didn’t.

Slowly, and with great deliberation, Stiles pulled the door of his Jeep open – wincing as aches ran across his shoulders. He tentatively swung both his legs round and slide gracelessly off his seat until (clinging to the door of the jeep), he was standing semi upright. He had never felt so sore in his life. This was a deep, aching soreness. Overpowering. And it did not feel good.

With complete disregard for what any observant neighbour might think Stiles inched his way slowly towards the house. He was moving at no more than a shuffle. His muscles were burning. His legs alternated between a jelly-like consistency and a furnace-like heat. His arms, he knew, were definitely sunburned. There had been no need to apply suntan lotion when they had started the day covered by sleeves. The cropped top look Mr Smug, Sleek, Sexy Sourwolf had given him had offered no such protection from the sun. All Stiles wanted to do was to shower the pain away, and then collapse onto his bed with a large bottle of lemonade and as many Reece’s as possible within easy reach. And try to forget. 

Once in the house Stiles crawled up the stairs. There were no witnesses, and hands and knees really seemed like the least painful option. Despite which, going round on all fours was a werewolf characteristic, and if the sadistic Sourwolf (and the other sadistic werewolf who was Stiles’s former best friend) wanted him to be physically more like a werewolf this was a part of the program he was happy to follow. It took a while to reach his room. In fact, it took a long while, with two pauses en route and more pain than he thought possible. Stiles glanced longingly at his bed from his doorway. The mattress was conveniently just above head height from his current position, but Stiles knew that if he lay down for a moment he would not get up again. And he really needed to shower. Stiles could see the comforting colours of his chips and chocolate stash on the floor just by the base of his bed. The box was tucked far enough under the bed that a certain Sheriff would not be able to spot it from a standing position. Although said Sheriff had learned the hard way not to go looking under Stile’s bed a couple of years ago, when he had discovered some of Stiles’s research literature (of an artistically photographic nature). Reassured that the basics of a well-balanced dinner were to hand, Stiles crawled slowly towards his bathroom.

The hoodie took some effort to get off. In spite of the unwanted customisation, it was still plastered to his back with sweat from where he had been sitting in the jeep for so long. After some minutes of wrangling with the damp red cloth it became apparent to Stiles that he might be trying to exit the top through one of the new side vents Derek had cut, and that just made things more complicated. The cut-off sweatpants were easier, and he simultaneously took his boxer briefs down with the sweatpants to save having to make the same movement twice. Stiles was all about energy efficiency at the moment, and he rewarded himself for this demonstration of extreme physical exertion by lying naked, flat on his back on the cool floor of the bathroom for a couple of minutes, trying to sooth the sunburn on the back of his arms. The redness of his arms stood out vividly against the pale colour of his skin. Stiles wondered if Derek ever got sunburned – wouldn’t werewolves just heal from that straight away? Could Derek tan? Or would his body just heal from that that too? If Derek were naked, would he have a tan line around his ass? Or would it all be one smooth, continuous muscled expanse of firm flesh? With the tight muscles of his ass clenched, free from the constraints of the dark denim jeans he had been wearing today. Stiles had wondered idly whether Derek had been wearing underwear today. It had been hard to determine when Derek had been walking ahead of Stiles up the hills, and Stiles had been casually observing with that observing manner that he had. If Derek did not wear underwear, would that make a difference to whether he had a tan line when he was naked? It would mean it would take less time to get him naked. Stiles’s heart rate fluttered somewhat faster, but clearly this was nothing to do with the purely academic thoughts he was having about the sadistic Sourwolf of an alpha. He was probably having a heart attack from the inhuman amount of physical exertion he had undertaken that day. 

The muscles in Stiles’s left leg were beginning to cramp. His whole body seemed to be sending urgent messages of pain, discomfort and distress to his brain. He slowly pushed himself onto hands and knees, earning himself a horrifying flashback to the push-up session Derek had put him through somewhere around the middle of the afternoon. Stiles crawled into the shower, and slowly climbed up the wall. Perhaps this was what driving people up the wall entailed? Punishing them to the brink of physical collapse and letting them pull themselves upright in the shower – one tile at a time. Resting his head against the shower wall, Stiles slowly raised his hand to turn on the water. It was tricky to get a temperature that soothed and relaxed his muscles without causing undue pain to the sunburn. Once he had the balance right, Stiles just stayed under the cascade of water, head pressed into the ceramic tile, breathing stenorously while staring down his torso to the shower tray below. He gently swayed from side to side to let the water reach different points of pain, but attempted nothing more strenuous than that. 

After half an hour, the skin on Stiles’s fingers was creased and shrivelled like a werewolf’s forehead. Stiles remembered that this was evolution’s way of making things easier to hold with wet hands – the skin thing, not the werewolf forehead thing. Clearly evolution had nothing to do with werewolves. Werewolves were like anti-evolution, taking everything backwards. Shrivelled fingers were all about gripping - but he had to sadly admit to himself he did not have the energy to try and hold onto anything with any particular firmness of grip at this stage. He was too tired even for some personal relaxation time. He let the water play down his aching back for another minute or two before shutting off the shower and hobbling out onto the bath mat. 

Standing in the middle of his bathroom in an exhausted daze, Stiles wondered if the warmth of the evening would dry his body for him. Reluctantly concluding that a certain amount of additional effort may be required, he reached for a towel and dabbed slowly and largely ineffectively at various areas of his body. Then his mind kicked into gear. Sugary sustenance was just yards away. With more speed than he had been capable of since the suicide runs, Stiles wrapped his towel around his waist and moved towards his bedroom.

The shower had obviously been longer than Stiles had thought. His bedroom was plunged into a gloomy darkness. Stiles fumbled for the light switch on the wall, when all of a sudden the flare of a pair of red eyes appeared on the other side of the room. Alpha eyes. An alpha was in his bedroom.

 

“Gaaaaaah”.

 

Stiles fell back against the bathroom door with panic rising in his chest, just as his hand connected with the light switch. His bedroom suddenly flooded with light. The alpha, lounging in Stiles’s desk chair, directed a smile towards him.


	5. Apparently you can have too much of a good thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott had spoken in an apologetic tone of voice, but no level of apology could possibly make up for the heinous treachery contained in those words. Benedict Arnold was finally surpassed in the hall of infamy. There could be no redemption from such a crime. Stiles sat up from his hunched position and stared directly ahead, his mouth a thin line representing white hot anger. Total betrayal. He glowered into the mirror on the wardrobe door opposite, staring malevolently at the reflection of the person playing Darth Vader to his Obi-Wan.

Scott pulled himself out of Stiles’s desk chair and stood up. His red alpha eyes quickly faded to their normal brown, and his most puppy-dog like smile of ingratiation was plastered on his face. He had obviously run over at some point when Stiles was in the shower – his T-shirt was off, as for some reason Scott never liked wearing a top when he wolfed out, and he had tucked one end of it into the back of his shorts so that it hung out looking for all the world like a bizarre Macy’s-own-label white cotton tail. Wasn’t there a Beatrix Potter story of Cottontail? Stiles was about to let out a snort of laughter when he remembered that he had determined never to speak to his former best friend ever again. This decision had been carefully thought out and rationally arrived at somewhere between his twenty second and his twenty third push up that afternoon. Closing his mouth, and grabbing at the top of his towel, Stiles stalked (somewhat stiffly) over to the end of his bed before gingerly lowering himself onto the mattress. He turned a sunburnt shoulder in the general direction of Scott, and prepared to ignore him.

“Stiles”

Stiles could sense Scott moving towards him, but he did not look in his direction. Scott had forced him into this state of complete physical debilitation for no good reason whatsoever. Scott was an awful friend, and did not deserve the attention of someone as awesome as Stiles.

“Stiles, I’m sorry”

Stiles opened his mouth to offer a biting and caustic riposte. The exact nature of the biting and caustic riposte eluded him right now, but Scott would know he had been bitten and causticised. But then Stiles remembered he was not speaking to Scott, ever again, owing to the agonising physical pain pervading all parts of Stiles’s totally in-shape body, so he gave a small noise of annoyance and shut his mouth.

Scott moved to where Stiles was slouched and sat next to him on the end of the bed. To avoid looking at him, Stiles carefully bent down and reached under his bed for his chocolate stash. His hand closed on empty air. He waved his arm around a little – sunburn giving a stab of pain as he did so – but still came up empty. His fingers brushed up against what felt like the glossy page of an appropriately artistic magazine of a broadly photographic nature, but no box of chocolate treats.

“I got rid of them Stiles.”

Scott had spoken in an apologetic tone of voice, but no level of apology could possibly make up for the heinous treachery contained in those words. Benedict Arnold was finally surpassed in the hall of infamy. There could be no redemption from such a crime. Stiles sat up from his hunched position and stared directly ahead, his mouth a thin line representing white hot anger. Total betrayal. He glowered into the mirror on the wardrobe door opposite, staring malevolently at the reflection of the person playing Darth Vader to his Obi Wan. 

“They would have undermined all the good work you did with Derek today”.

Stiles put out an even more ferocious glare at Scott – something akin to Derek’s number 2 glare. A violent knitting of the eyebrows, a disparaging sneer of the mouth and a sense of menace exuding from every individual bit of dark, manly stubble. Not that Stiles had any stubble - dark, manly or otherwise. In fact the shaving foam in the bathroom was principally decorative, aside from that time he had experimented on his legs. But even without the stubble Stiles was pretty sure he was communicating his feelings.

Scott looked down, somewhat abashed. Stiles began to spot a problem with the current situation. Stiles was not going to speak to his treacherous former best friend ever, ever, absolutely ever again – but that meant he could not tell him to get lost. And now that Stiles was seated he was not certain he was ever going to be able to stand again. Which meant that Stiles could not march out of the room. He was effectively trapped. Scott could carry on sitting there and talking to him, and Stiles would be held captive. 

By way of a palliative to his anger, at least until he found a way out of his current conundrum, Stiles continued to glare at their reflections in the mirror. It began to dawn on him that the reflection of the two of them sitting side by side was not as flattering as it could be. Stiles’s towel clad form was showing a red, blotchy, and selectively sunburned pale skin, while Scott (sitting head down, in just his shorts, with his stupid Macy’s-own-label T-shirt tail) was radiating an image of calm if apologetic rude health. Scott’s shirtlessness evinced the normal muscled body tone that went with werewolfdom, his stomach displaying its characteristic hard, lean and toned planes (did that mean that he had not consumed the chocolate himself? That he had WASTED the chocolate? Stiles gave another huff of betrayed indignation). Scott’s pecs, which to be fair were pretty firm pre werewolf, seemed to be an advertisement for what moral and healthy living could achieve in an annoyingly self-righteous way. Stiles, meanwhile, was aware of the slightly fleshy appearance of his own chest and, if he was going to be honest, a definite belly overhang above the top of his towel. Shifting to his right slightly to increase the distance from Scott, there was also a distinct crease of a love handle in evidence on his side. Oh, and that weird patch of bare skin half way down his left calf where the leg hair had never grown back. Perhaps Scott had been right. Perhaps Stiles had gotten a little chubby?

Stiles dismissed the thought at once. Scott was not right. Scott was an awful, awful friend, who had subjected him to physical torment for no reason at all. Stiles was in no way chubby. Stiles was in great shape, and had just filled out into a more manly physique. Stiles slowly moved his hand to his midriff, and tentatively felt for his abs. Which seemed to have temporarily absented themselves.

Next to him Scott shifted nervously, and Stiles felt Scott’s hand cautiously rest on his left shoulder. Stiles lifted his gaze from the search for his abs, to glower at Scott as a prelude to shrugging his shoulder away from Scott’s grasp. But just as he was about to brace his muscles for the enormous exertion such a gesture would entail, he saw Scott’s veins flush black, and he felt the pain from the sunburn fade. The werewolf version of analgesic aspirin seemed to have kicked in.

“Dude” Scott’s voice had a pleading quality to it, but also a somewhat husky (hah! No, not hah! Darth Vader. Benedict Arnold) tone. “Dude, let me explain.”

Stiles temporarily abandoned the shoulder shrugging, getting Scott’s hand off plan. The leaching of pain made it somewhat impolitic, and he would be able to shrug more effectively with less pain in situ. But the Derek Hale glare number 2 (patent pending) remained in place. It was the sort of glare Obi-Wan would have given Darth Vader as Darth Vader was about to strike Obi-Wan down with a light sabre.

“Dude, I can’t do this without you. You are my best friend and I just could never face all the weird shit that is happening if you won’t help me. It is not the alpha thing, it is the whole werewolf thing. And the whole high school thing. And the whole being me thing. I will go to pieces if you aren’t with me.”

Sage words in Stiles’s opinion, but perhaps Scott should have thought of that before throwing him to the tender ministrations of a certain sadistic Sourwolf. Scott’s hand moved slowly from Stile’s shoulder across his bare back, taking some of the ache away from his muscles.

“But you have to understand…” 

Stiles stiffened under Scott’s touch. Did Scott actually think he could justify himself to Stiles? After the pain of today? And after the loss of a good fifty dollars-worth of emergency chocolate supplies?

“If you were to get hurt because of my shit” Scott’s voice seemed to break on the word “hurt”, but not in the funny breaking-while-trying-to-find-my-alpha-voice way. “If something were to happen to you because of me and what I dragged you into. If something like what Gerard…” 

Scott stopped, and started to breathe deeply through his nose. Stiles could feel Scott’s hand trembling as it rested on the pale bare skin of Stiles’s back. Scott continued, speaking somewhat thickly “I can’t let you get hurt like that again, Stiles. You are too important to me. And last night – it was probably just because the weather was so warm, or because you tripped, or using the mountain ash had drained you or something, but you were pretty slow getting away from that omega. And I thought that I would not be able to get to you before he did. And if that had happened…” Scott stopped again. 

There was a long pause. Stiles stared down at the hem of his towel.

“So when Derek offered to train you, I thought that would be a way I could have you with me, without running too many risks. I thought it would help. I mean you are great with the planning and the mountain ash and the research. Allison and I would never have gotten back together if you had not found those web sites telling us about the different positions and how to… well, you remember. But while I need you with me out there, I need to know you are safe. I can’t afford to lose you. So I thought the training would be a good idea. And then when Derek called and said that the training had not gone too well, and that he could smell how furious you were at me, and…”

Scott petered off into silence with a small choked sound. There was another long pause. 

“Dude, you are my best friend, and I love you. I don’t want to lose you. But I would rather lose you than let you get hurt” Scott concluded in a small voice. In the mirror Stiles could seem him hang his head, hiding his face below his fringe of hair. He had not seen Scott do this since he was nine and he had come running over to Stiles’s house after his parents had told him they were getting divorced. He had stayed in Stiles’s room for two days solid then, and had refused to look at anyone or speak to anyone except Stiles for the whole time.

Stiles blinked his eyes rapidly. Some of the shampoo from the shower had clearly got into them and was making them water a little. He cleared his throat a couple of times.

“I know you were looking out for me” Stiles said. “And I know I was slow getting away from that omega”

Scott looked up, with red rimmed rather than red alpha eyes. Stiles tactfully looked away. “It was tough terrain. And the weather…” Scott said quickly, with a certain emotional undercurrent to his voice like he was trying to hold it steady. Stile looked back at him gratefully, but then heaved a sigh.

“No, you were right last night”. Stiles prodded ruefully at his stomach, then immediately regretted it as his muscles sent forth urgent howls of protest to his brain. “I have gotten too chubby for all the chasing around with werewolves shit. Apparently you can have too much of a good thing, even if that thing is as stupendous as Stiles Stilinski.”

“Does that mean you will carry on training with Derek?” Scott asked eagerly, before quickly backtracking “I mean, if you want to. It is your call, dude. You make all the decisions in this friendship, you know that, right? I know he can be a bit much to handle, but I think he is looking out for your best interests. He wants you to be safe”.

Stiles confined himself to a snort of derision, and then reluctantly conceded “Yeah, I guess. But no telling him I admitted to anything” he made an arm movement that gestured up and down at his torso.

“So does that mean we are friends, or do you want to hurl lacrosse balls at my face again?” Scott asked.

“I’ll skip the lacrosse balls, on one condition”

“Great. Those things freakin’ hurt. Werewolf healing does not stop me feeling things. What do you want from me?”

Stiles slowly lent back into the mattress of his bed with a groan of barely suppressed agony. “Rub my muscles until the pain goes away.”


	6. Mercutio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles could hear the rustle of a packet being opened and then something else being unwrapped. Stiles's heart gave a quick stutter. He knew that sound. He thought he knew what was being unwrapped. And if he was right about all of that then he knew that the unwrapping process he was hearing was but a prelude to a few moments of absolutely exquisite pleasure.

“One pain-relieving, werewolf power massage coming up”. Scott’s tone was relieved, almost euphoric, now Stiles had calmed down. “But before I do…”

Stile’s bed bounced, causing a certain discomfort for Stiles as Scott bounded up with an irrepressible energy. He came back and leant slightly away from Stiles hiding something from his view. Stiles had not moved from his prone position on the mattress, and he was possibly never going to move from his prone position on the mattress. A life of quiet contemplation, staring up at his ceiling, seemed a fantastic career choice to Stiles right now. 

Stiles could hear the rustle of a packet being opened and then something else being unwrapped. Stiles's heart gave a quick stutter. He knew that sound. He thought he knew what was being unwrapped. And if he was right about all of that then he knew that the unwrapping process he was hearing was but a prelude to a few moments of absolutely exquisite pleasure.

“A Scotty snack”. Scott handed Stiles a Reese’s peanut butter cup.

“Dude”. Stiles felt a well of emotion rise up within him, but then remembered his resolution. Not the well-thought-out, never, ever speaking to Scott resolution, because Scott was Anakin Skywalker again and somewhere in the background Ewoks were dancing and singing, and that resolution was stupid and finished with. There was, however, the other well-thought-out resolution to eat healthily, a resolution that he had arrived at five minutes ago. 

Scott seemed to know what he was thinking. “One won’t hurt. And everyone deserves a Scotty snack after working out like you did today.” Scott was looking down at Stiles with a certain pleading in his eyes – eyes that were still somewhat red around the edges. Clearly this was some kind of concluding peace offering, sealing the deal on their eternal friendship. Like a pipe of peace, only without the cancerous side effects. 

Stiles took the confectionary reverentially in his hands, and bit in. It was what he had been craving since about three o’clock when the sit-up session had commenced.

“Let me start with the shoulders”. 

Stiles lay on his back as Scott gently rubbed his hands across his shoulders and chest. As Scott occasionally leaned forwards to access a particularly strained muscle Stiles got a glimpse of the black pulsing up and down the veins in Scott’s arms. “Does it hurt?” he asked curiously. Stiles was all about curiosity. It was how he got the knowledge to be a werewolf Yoda. And a werewolf Obi-Wan. “I mean, are you absorbing my pain and feeling it yourself?”

“God, no.” Scott looked amused. “Do you think I want to feel the pain you are feeling right now?” he gave a lopsided grin down at Stiles, and shuffled himself closer to Stiles’s side. “It is just a tingling sensation, and a bit sensitive. It does not really hurt, hurt. A jumpy sort of feeling. Like trying to touch yourself again too soon after you cum.” 

“Dude, seriously. Not the best analogy to be making when your best friend is clad only in a thin cotton towel and you are giving him a massage”.

“Sorry”. Scott started sniffing at Stile’s torso, drawing in closer to Stiles as he did so. 

“Now what?” asked Stiles.

“I am sniffing out the worst of the muscle pain” said Scott. “But dude, you reek of Derek.”

“That might be because a certain werewolf forced me to spend the whole day with the angsty alpha.” Stiles put on a tone of mock indignation, but made sure Scott could tell he was not really angry. He did not want to cause any more head-hanging, red eyed guilt from Scott.

“But it’s a different sort of Derek smell. It is definitely his scent, but – I don’t know. It is like it is a hotter scent?” Scott had stopped massaging Stiles’s chest and was resting his hands there. Stiles was enjoying the pain drain nature of all of this, but rather hoped that there would be a bit more motion soon. He liked the motion. It was soothing.

“I thought that earlier today” Stiles said, with an attempt at a pointed glance in the direction of his chest as a subtle hint that motion from Scott would be good sometime soon. It was difficult to glance pointedly from a prone position, but Stiles could roll his eyeballs in a pretty expressive manner.

“It’s weird. It is like Derek is layering on an emotion on top of – wait, you can smell werewolf scent?”

“Sure, since the whole magic fairy dust thing. Derek is dense woods, smoky, with an undercurrent of decay. You, on the other hand, are all pine needles and resin and new leaves on trees.”

Scott looked somewhat startled, but then continued with his thought process. “I sometimes scent the same sort of thing on Isaac – earlier today when I was babysitting the betas” Scott broke off to wince at some clearly unpleasant recollection, and Stiles made a mental note to probe into that at a more convenient time. Perhaps when Scott was not idly rubbing Stiles’s chest around the nipple area. “It was Isaac’s scent – which is all lemon juice and enthusiasm - but it was also a hotter sense of Isaac’s scent.”

“I’ll research it if I ever get the use of my limbs back” Stiles reassured him. “Perhaps it has something to do with alphas working with betas of a different pack?”

“Maybe. But I didn’t get it off Erica or Boyd.”

Scott slowly moved his hands down to Stile’s midriff, and began leaching the pain of the hundreds – no thousands – no tens of thousands of sit ups Derek forced Stiles to do. Stiles had stopped counting after thirty, so he was not sure how many he had done. But it felt like tens of thousands. The pain seemed to be leaching more slowly, however, and the black of Scott’s veins was pulsing less vigorously as well.

“Dude, are your batteries running down or something?”

“No”. Scott looked a little apprehensive, as if he were struggling to find the right words. “No, it is just that the muscle tissue is , uuuh, somewhat deeper around your stomach area, so it takes longer for the werewolf mojo to get to it through the, ummm, intervening tissue.” Scott looked nervous that Stiles might take offence at this. Stiles manfully ignored the uncomfortable inference, and concentrated on experiencing the pleasure while he could.

A while later, Stiles was lying on his front, and Scott was to one side of him working his way over Stiles’s shoulder blades. Stiles had his head pillowed on his arms, and he was drifting in haze of contentment. 

“Dude”. Scott was again sounding nervous. “Can I ask you something?”

Obviously he had just asked Stiles something, but Stiles was not going to go down that route. To get into a semantic debate might lead to an interruption of the massage service, and Stiles did not want there to be any interruption of the massage service, ever. Except possibly to apply massage oil. He would have to investigate whether anyone in Beacon Hills supplied massage oil. And whether he would be able to buy it without the Sheriff finding out – because, awkward. And he would have to check to see if massage oil negated the werewolf mojo effect (because that would be no use at all). Perhaps he should experiment with wolfsbane massage oil as well, so see what that did. Stiles pulled himself off that train of thought, though bookmarked it for future investigation, and grunted out an assent to Scott.

“What happened, Stiles? I mean why did you suddenly start with the junk food? You have been so good with food and your dad, and we played lacrosse like, all the time, and then all of a sudden it all stopped. I get that you were upset by Lydia, but you are friends now, right? Which is more than you had a year ago. So why the sudden comfort eating binge and the chubby, I mean the more robust look?”

Scott got through it all in something of a rush. He had clearly been keeping this question in for some time, and was still worried about what the answer was going to be. Stiles was going to have to get him to stop walking on egg shells. It was not as if Stiles was broken. At least, he was pretty sure he wasn’t broken. Derek had broken him with his sadistic workout routine and his stupid nearly four hour long hikes through the woods, forcing Stiles to stare at the taut muscles of Derek’s butt pushing at the denim if his jeans, but his best friend and his best friend’s stupendous ability to give a werewolf massage for the past half an hour or so were putting him back together.

“I don’t know, it was like something inside me snapped. The hope died, maybe? I have always known that deep down Lydia was great. There is this hostile, aggressive exterior, but underneath there is an intelligent, fantastic person who really cares”. Stiles could almost feel Scott raising his eyebrows. “Dude, really. Lydia is far more than she lets on. And I was the only one who knew that the menacing persona was just a front. That she is truly a nice person trying to get on in a world that does not really understand her and won’t look beyond the surface. She is more than what she wears, or how fantastic she looks, and so much more than the hostile things she says. And I wanted to get close to that person that I know is in there. Being friends with her is awesome, but I wanted more.” Stiles trailed off. It was not often he struggled to put things into words. “I wanted to hold that special person, that person that only I could see. I wanted to wake up with my arms around them, pulling them next to me, and have them know that only I could know what their innermost hopes and fears were.” Stiles smiled ruefully to himself.

Scott continued with his slow and thoughtful massage. “I get that Stiles, I really do. Allison and I – “ Scott stopped, not wanting to make things any worse. “If it would help, you can put your arms around me”

“While that would be wonderful Scott” Stiles could still manage dry sarcasm when the occasion called for it “it is the whole holding someone that no one else sees thing that I wanted. I know you inside out, but so does Allison. And everyone else. You have your heart on your sleeve – and on your Facebook page, and on your Twitter account, and it is one of the many wonderful things that makes you, you… But feel free to hug me whenever you feel like it.”

“Noted, as to the last bit”. Scott had started rubbing up and down Stiles’s spine in a contemplative manner, as he thought about what Stiles had just said. “I get it, I think.”

Stiles was feeling all kinds of relaxed now, and muttered sleepily into his arms. “Of course you get it. I just want what you and Allison have – only without some of the weird shit that we will never, ever speak of …You should go, Scott” – the spine rubbing stopped suddenly, and Stiles could feel a panicked tension from Scott – “no, I mean you should head off back to Allison. You have been here all evening, and I know what you two are like”. But that was the area of internet research that they had agreed never to discuss again, and so Stiles did not elaborate any further.

“It’s OK bro. I told Allison I was going to be with you in the evenings this week. Help you get through the training. I’ll see her tomorrow afternoon after the beta babysitting, and I’ll be back here in the evening”. There was another tremor in Scott’s hands at the mention of the betas – Stiles was really going to have to dig deep into what that was all about.

Stiles could feel the emotion welling up inside him again. Really, what was the matter with him? He was behaving like the biggest girlie girl ever. But everything that had been bothering him since the whole Kanima showdown seemed to be rising to the surface tonight, and the fact that Scott had voluntarily if temporarily put their friendship ahead of his epic romance of star crossed lovers was completely unprecedented. Stiles was getting a way better deal than Mercutio ever did. And Romeo did not give massages, either. At least, not in the canon version. There was that web film version Stiles had stumbled across… Stiles understood what Allison meant to Scott. He had never thought that their friendship had even a hope of competing, and he accepted it. Though Stiles had a shrewd idea about as to what Scott and Allison might possibly be getting up to tomorrow afternoon to allow Scott to get some bro-bonding time in the evening. 

Scott seemed to be thinking along the same lines as there was a slight squirming on the bed next to Stiles, then Scott continued. “So, is the back good? Shall I move onto your legs?”

Stiles closed his eyes and groaned out his assent. Scott carefully folded back the bottom half of the towel that was draped modestly over Stiles’s waist. He slowly began rubbing his hands from Stiles’s knees, up his thighs towards the hem of the towel – leaching out the pain in the muscles as he went.


	7. A particularly fine ass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek had wolfed out in front of him, red eyes, fangs, crinkly brow and missing eyebrows, the whole nine yards. The timbre of an alpha came echoing out as he roared
> 
> “Scott slept with you last night?”

There was an insistent beeping in Stiles’s right ear. He opened an eye and glared in its general direction. A Samsung phone lay in a patch of sunlight on his nightstand, and some kind of alarm seemed to be going off. Not his alarm, because his alarm was an ever changing kaleidoscope of music tracks. This was the alarm of someone who had not worked out how to change their factory settings. The brown arm of a werewolf reached across him, and smacked the phone screen to stop the noise. Stiles got a pine and resin and new leaves scent. “Mornin’” he said.

“Mornin’.” Scott muttered, somewhere around the back of Stiles’s neck. Stiles was lying prone on the bed, his legs slightly apart and his head resting on his folded arms, on top of the sheet. The heat of the summer rendered bedclothes optional. Also apparently clothes. The towel Stiles had been using the night before lay in a heap on the floor, just on the fringes of his vision. So Stiles was naked, face down on the bed. He could feel Scott pressed up against his left side, his right arm flung casually across Stiles’s back with the palm of his hand pressed loosely to the side of Stiles’s chest. Scott moved his nose up and down the scruff of Stiles’s neck a couple of time, sighing out a breath as he did so – seriously, werewolves and necks. This was going to have to be an area of priority research. “How do you feel?”.

Stiles contemplated that for a moment. A quick inventory of his bodily extremities indicated none of the mind numbing pain of the previous day. Sunburn, fine. Legs, fine. Arms and shoulders, fine. His dick was lying flacidly beneath him because he was waking up next to Scott, and they rarely had morning wood together during sleepovers. Unless there had been heavy drinking the night before (at least, pre werewolf) and Stiles knew that was just an alcohol in the bladder, pressure related biological reaction thing. So, yes, soft dick, but he was pretty sure it would be in full working order when he tested it later. “I feel good. Great in fact.”

“Great” Scott yawned out. He pushed himself up, and crawled over Stiles to the side of the bed. At some point last night, after Stiles had passed out in a blissfully pain free sleep, Scott had pulled off his shorts before lying down next to his best friend, and so Stiles was treated to an eye level sideways view of Scott’s ass encased in the black Macy’s own label boxer briefs that his mother bought for him. Stiles idly wondered why Allison had not done something about that. Though he suspected Scott did not wear said boxer briefs for very long in Allison’s presence. Scott stumbled out the bedroom door and Stiles heard him moving down the stairs. 

Stiles lay there for another couple of minutes before he heard his werewolf friend crashing up the stairs again. Stiles opened one eye again, as Scott deposited a glass of orange juice on the nightstand. “Thanks” Stiles muttered, pushing himself into a semi seated position. Scott tossed some clothes down on the end of the bed.

“I washed them for you last night”. Scott was clearly proud of himself. The red hoodie looked fine, Derek’s adaptations aside. The grey cut-off (clawed off?) sweatpants, however, had a somewhat pinkish hue to them. Clearly Scott was not familiar with the concept of separating colours when washing. Stiles avoided commenting – Scott looked so pleased with himself.

“Thanks”. Stiles said again as he stood up, and was somewhat surprised to be pulled into a bear hug – or wolf hug – by Scott. 

“Dude, you know I just want you to be safe, right? I can’t be an alpha without you. I can’t be me without you.” There was an urgent insistence to Scott’s tone. “If it gets too much today, call me.”

Stiles patted Scott’s back “I know Scott. And if Derek gets more than usually grouchy I will call. But I’ll try and work at it.” Scott hugged him tighter. “Umm, dude?” Stiles was reluctant to ruin the moment, but… “you are hugging me while just wearing your boxers. And I am treating the neighbours to a memorable display of my particularly fine and naked ass”. 

Scott pulled away and grinned again. “That’ll get the gossip going. But you did say I could hug you whenever I wanted, and it felt like a moment. Get dressed. I’ll sort out some breakfast”. Stiles turned and bent down to pick up the clawed off sweats, but started up suddenly as Scott smacked at his rear. 

“You’re right” Scott said. “It is a particularly fine ass.” Scott pulled on his shorts, grabbed his T-shirt, and went back downstairs.

 

=============

After Scott ran off to his beta babysitting morning and ensuing Allison related session of afternoon delight, Stiles sighed in resignation, and let himself out of the house. Derek had been insistent on his running to training today, and had threatened all sorts of bodily harm to his Jeep (and, come to think of it, to Stiles), if Stiles had dared to drive over to the Hale house. But the weather was oppressively hot and humid, and there was no way Stiles was going to run. He started walking as a compromise. A fairly brisk walk, but that was it.

About half an hour later and Stiles was approaching the Hale house across the clearing in the woods. All of a sudden, there was a blast of French horns and his phone was sounding out a few bars of Prokofiev. Why in the hell was Derek calling him? He had to be, what, a hundred yards from the front door? At this range, werewolf smelling abilities would be fine and functioning, Stiles knew full well (he had been experimenting with Scott on this point just last week – seeing how far Scott could smell, and whether the sense cut off at a certain distance or just became more imprecise).

“Derek, you leather clad control freak, I am right here” Stiles said, in his normal voice. He had long gotten over the urge to raise his voice in the presence of super werewolf hearing. The door to the Hale house flung open and Derek skidded down the steps to stand in front of Stiles with indecent speed. “What is with the phoning? Could you not tell I was right here?”

“You don’t smell like you. You smell like Scott” 

Stiles was intrigued by that. “So, the werewolf sense of smell can be tricked by overlaying another smell? Interesting. That could be useful with the alpha pack, you know. We could try and find a way…”

“Why do you smell like Scott?”

Stiles was not going to be distracted. At least he probably would be distracted, because he was often distracted, but he was going to be distracted on his own terms and would be distracted down a path of his own choosing, and not distracted down the path of a stupid alpha werewolf’s choosing, because werewolves did not make good choices. Ever. And where was he going with this?

“Why do you smell like Scott?”

Derek was babbling in an irritating way in Stiles’s opinion. Best to shut him up.

“Probably because he slept with me last night. So, you could not tell it was…”

Stiles was distracted again. Derek had wolfed out in front of him, red eyes, fangs, crinkly brow and missing eyebrows, the whole nine yards. The timbre of an alpha came echoing out as he roared

“Scott slept with you last night?”

Stiles felt somewhat confused by the rather rapid turn of events.


	8. Stretching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slowly, deliberately, and in a way that reminded Stiles irresistibly of the late, lamented Miguel and that afternoon with Danny, Derek pulled off his top.

Stiles gazed in some bewilderment at the fanged out werewolf in front of him.

“Yes, you aggressive freak of nature, or unnature, or anti-nature, or whatever the hell it is werewolves are. Scott slept over last night.”

Derek drew in a deep breath, and then his face morphed slowly back towards human, though not quite getting there. “You don’t smell of sex.”

“Oh, my God. Dude. Gross. Of course I don’t smell of sex. Scott slept over last night. Why would I smell of sex after that? Scott is, like, my brother. Scott is Scott, and I have no intention of pursuing that. And despite his undoubted appreciation of my fine ass” there was another flash of red from Derek ‘s eyes “for some weird reason Scott remains immune to the considerable personal physical charms of a certain Stiles Stilinski. The whole concept is just gross on so many levels. Eugh, eugh, eugh, eugh. Why on earth would you even consider…” Stiles was completely nonplussed.

Derek was back in human form and seemed somewhat embarrassed by his complete overreaction to two dudes spending a night naked, or near naked, together after an in-depth massage. And, OK, when put like that it could be misconstrued, but it was Scott which negated the whole thing. The fact that it was Scott was like a big bucket of cold water and a huge dose of bromide to the libido. Not Allison’s libido, of course, but certainly to Stiles’s libido. Stiles thought he could discern a faint reddish blush beneath Derek’s stubble. Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to. So could werewolves blush? It might have been sunburn. But then he didn’t think Derek could get sunburn. Or a tan line. But that was probably not a line of inquiry that he should be pursuing right now. 

“Sex makes you weak before training”. 

To Stiles, that was just a weird ass reason, and far too Spartan warrior to be serious. Although, thinking about it, perhaps the Spartan warriors had really been a big pack of werewolves? It would account for some of the legends. Would Derek know? What would Derek look like as a Spartan warrior? He’d like the whole leather clad armour thing, for sure. Would he feel happy wearing a skirt? Perhaps it would depend on whether the skirt was leather too.

“Stiles”

Stiles brought his attention back to the present. And noticed that, once again, the leather outer coating seemed to have been discarded by Derek. Derek was standing wearing sweatpants and a loose fitting top. 

“I’ll train alongside you today, to make sure you don’t slacken the pace.”

Given that Stiles had been driven to the brink of physical annihilation yesterday, he was somewhat offended by the implication here. 

“Suicide runs, like yesterday. Starting NOW”.

Stiles tried to remember why he was doing this, and started off in pursuit of the alpha.

 

 

Two hours later and Stiles was once again an exhausted puddle of sweat, and perhaps a little over 147 pounds of pale skin and fragile bone. He lay on the ground breathing in laboured gasps. His hoodie was stuck to his gut (he was now prepared to concede he had a gut, but only to himself and maybe Scott), with the results of the morning’s toil. There was sweat, there were tears, and he could not swear that there was not blood as well. His clawed-off sweatpants were the same dark hue they had been yesterday, albeit with Scott’s introduction of a pink overtone. Dusky pink perhaps? The heat was merging with humidity, and the humidity was oppressive. Derek threw him a bottle of water.

“Five minutes, fat boy. Then sit ups”

Derek was doing stretches somewhere in the background. Stiles slowly pulled himself into a sitting position to facilitate drinking the water – though intravenous would probably have been the better option now – and glanced towards him. Apparently satisfied with the elasticity of his werewolf muscles Derek stopped stretching, and stood up. Slowly, deliberately, and in a way that reminded Stiles irresistibly of the late, lamented Miguel and that afternoon with Danny, Derek pulled off his top. Sadly, he was wearing a grey cut off sleeveless sports top underneath – no, not sadly. Stiles did not care what Derek wore underneath, it was all the same to him. Although if Derek had been shirtless it might have enabled him to conduct further research into whether werewolves could get a suntan.

Derek swung his upper body around in an arc a couple of times, and began stretching out his biceps (my, what big biceps you have Mr Wolf – but again, no, not a good line of thought to pursue), and then suddenly sat to pull off his sweatpants in a fluid movement that Stiles could only envy – and certainly never emulate. When he thought of the effort it took to remove his own sweatpants last night…. Although of course Stiles had simultaneously been removing his boxer briefs, and Derek was keeping on his shorts. So Stiles was entitled to have been somewhat less elegant, because he had been removing twice the quantity of clothing.

Derek’s shorts were definitely still on, but Stiles was beginning to question why Derek had bothered to keep them on. The shorts were dark blue, or probably black lycra, and clung rigidly to Derek’s body. Derek was very definitely not wearing any underwear with today’s costume. From the hem of the cut off top to mid thigh was a slightly shiny expanse of taut dark material.

“Ready?”

The Derek but hot Derek smell was coming off of the alpha again – more pungent than ever before. Perhaps it was a musk type thing brought on by whatever werewolves did instead of sweating? Because Derek was clearly not sweating. 

Derek unrolled a mat on the ground. “Sit ups”

Stiles glowered a little, but did not say anything. Oxygen was seemingly in short supply these days and it was best not to get too extravagant in using it. For, like, words. He lay on his back on the mat, with his knees drawn up and his feet flat to the mat. Derek came and deliberately stood on top of his feet, so that each of Derek’s feet trapped Stile’s sneakers beneath. Staring down at Stiles from his standing position at Stiles’s feet, Derek ordered “sit up. Touch my knees with your hands. 50 times. Go”.

Stiles huffed a little, pushed himself up, and leant forwards to touch Derek’s knees. His face was now just inches away from the shiny black lycra of Derek’s shorts, and if he raised his eyes just a little they would be in line with….

“Stiles”

Derek did not seem too thrilled that Stiles had paused in the middle of his first sit up. But that view was distracting. Stiles lowered himself back down reluctantly, then pulled himself up with a little more enthusiasm, pausing momentarily at the apex of the sit up to consider the material in front of him. Because lycra was an interesting material. How it constrained, and moulded itself to the contours of the human body, and how it…

“Stiles”

Right. Back down.

 

 

Stiles was just reached the top of his twenty sixth sit up when there was a crash of thunder and the heavens opened. Great drops of rain water splashed down, and two or three hit Derek’s shorts right in front of Styles face, moistening and darkening the fabric. At least, Stiles thought it was raindrops that were moistening and darkening the fabric. Although the fabric seemed only to be getting wet where Stiles's eyes were fixated. Perhaps because the shorts jutted out at that point...


	9. Warm-up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles completely lost his mind. In a long history of saying stupid things at inappropriate times, he said the stupidest thing he had ever said.

Stiles felt a certain sense of satisfaction as he and Derek ran for the house. Clearly there was going to be an unscheduled interruption in the training slash torture session and that was just fine as far as Stiles was concerned. The deluge of rain was of biblical proportions. Stiles wondered whether Noah’s Ark would have needed two werewolves on board? Werewolves could be made by a bite, like Scott, so only one werewolf would be absolutely required. Werewolves did not have to breed, after all. Derek did not have to breed with anyone, though it would be a bit of a waste of those muscles if he did not find someone to mate with. And if there was only one werewolf on board the Ark, wouldn’t it get lonely? Everyone else on the Ark would have had someone else to be with. And could werewolves get seasick, or would they heal from that automatically? Stiles was pretty sure werewolves got lonely, Derek being a case in point, but seasickness was a different proposition.

Stiles’s interesting academic speculations were suddenly interrupted by a hand grasping the scruff of his neck – AGAIN with the neck – in a firm alpha grip. He was jerked inside from the porch into the hallway, which showed itself to be its typical rather desolate wasteland of emptiness - bar a rug and the lying, treacherous, faulty set of bathroom scales by the stairs. 

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, OW”

“Stop complaining”

Stiles contemplated a glower, but what was the use? He decided on a quick flail of both arms, which had the added advantage of getting him out from Derek’s grasp. “So we are done for now, right? I mean, there is no hope of training in that” Stiles gestured outside at the dripping porch.

“We need to keep your heart rate elevated”

Stiles noted with considerable dislike that Derek’s sadistic leer was back in place. So was the hot smell of Derek – it was far more noticeable than it had been outside now that they were both in the more confined space of the house. Stiles really wanted to start researching this – and the whole neck thing. Perhaps tonight if his muscles allowed him. Or if Scott could sort out his muscles earlier in the evening. 

“Run to the top of the stairs and back down, 25 times”

Stiles just gaped at Derek. Inarticulate sounds of protest came out. Derek stepped towards him in a threatening manner before Stiles hit on a perfectly reasonable reason for him to be sitting on the floor and thinking of life, and absolutely not running up stairs.

“Dude, are those things even safe? They look like a frikkin’ death trap. I am not taking my life in my hands on those things.”

“They hold my weight, no problem. They SHOULD take your weight.”

Stiles was getting fed up with this. He was prepared to concede the weight issue himself, and he could take Scott referring to it obliquely. But he was annoyed with the stupid, Sourwolf of an alpha barking on about it all the time. Derek was enjoying the combination of insults, personal comments and sheer physical torture far too much. Something of Stiles’s sense of ire must have been communicated in his attitude (maybe his scent?) because Derek backed off a step, the leer faded, and instead he just said:

“In your own time, Stiles.”

Stiles huffed indignantly, but remembered that he had told Scott he would try. And he had promised himself he would do his best. The stairs were fairly shallow, so he started climbing two at a time.

“Hit every step, Stiles.”

Stiles huffed again, although this time it probably sounded like heavy breathing from the extreme exertion. He carried on up, hitting every step, reached the top, turned, and jogged down.

“One”

Derek drew the word out as Stiles reached the floor of the hall. The sadistic leer seemed to be creeping back. Stiles turned and started jogging back up the stairs again. It was an uncomfortable exercise. The staircase must once have been a very dramatic structure, and would no doubt have added to the grandeur of the Hale house, but the treads were difficult to get a grip on, particularly for someone whose coordination had tended to be variable. And Stiles was aware that the rapid number of short steps he was forced to take as he ascended the stairs were making his stomach jiggle up and down above his waistband in an noticeable manner. It was more uncomfortable than when Derek’s warm hand had been jiggling his spare tyre yesterday. That had been embarrassing and was no doubt had meant to be insulting, but it had also been strangely intimate and…

At this point Stiles’s left foot came down on the very edge of the stair tread, and slipped off. Stiles felt his legs cut away from under him, as he pitched forward. Something sliced open his right leg causing a sharp pain, and he thought he heard an anguished cry – scream, almost - of “Stiles” right before his head connected with the bannister and a dark oblivion enveloped him.

 

===============

 

When Stiles came to, he was lying on a bed, staring at a white ceiling. He could hear the rain and occasional thunder from outside. Someone nearby was calling his name with a somewhat frantic undertone.

Stiles blinked a couple of times, and slowly a copious amount of black and manly stubble came into view. 

“Stiles. STILES.”

“Sourwolf.”

There was a gasp of relief, and then some sniffing around the back of his head. 

“Would you mind suspending the creepy werewolf crap for long enough to tell me where the hell I am?” Stiles was feeling disorientated, which was not that unusual to be honest, but he preferred it when the disorientation came from a lack of Adderall in the system and not from ignorance. Stiles did not like being ignorant about anything.

Derek’s tone was calmer than before, with a palpable undercurrent of relief. “I was checking for concussion, which you don’t have, thank God. And you are in my bedroom”.

Stiles struggled to pull himself up, before Derek put a restraining hand on his chest.

“Wait”

Derek’s hand stayed pressed against Stiles’s chest. Further sniffing.

“Your leg is badly cut. I am going to have to clean it up. You must have caught it on a nail or something. But that is it, I can’t smell anything else.” There was a pause. Derek seemed to be in the grip of some strong emotion, which struck Stiles as odd. Unless the emotion was anger or irritation, when it would be normal. But that did not seem to be it.

“Stiles, I am sorry, I pushed you too hard. You might have been…”

Derek was suddenly in Stiles’s line of vision. In fact, Derek’s face was pretty much all his vision could take in. It didn’t look like Derek – Stiles had to consider if he was hallucinating. Derek appeared concerned, seriously concerned, and focused intensely on Stile’s eyes His hand traced gently along the side of Stiles’s face, until Derek seemed to realise what he was doing. The hand then was snatched back for a moment. Seconds later, two firm alpha hands were placed under Stiles’s arms, and he was lifted into a more seated position against a surprisingly large number of pillows.

Stiles looked around him. The room was a pale brown colour, with a hardwood floor and a huge Persian looking rug. He was on a large bed covered in white bed linen – which was somewhat marred by some blood stains that seemed to be coming from a cut on his thigh.

“This is in your house?”

“Of course it is. I have renovated some of the rooms that are out of sight. The public areas are kept empty and derelict as a deterrent, but my personal space has been renovated. Where did you think I slept?”

Stiles was confused. He had not ever given much thought to where Derek slept, to be honest. What Derek wore when sleeping, or didn’t wear when sleeping, may have crossed his mind once or twice - OK Derek’s choice of bed-wear might have been something he thought about quite a bit in the dark reaches of the night - but where he slept did not seem so important. “I don’t know. I guess I assumed you curled up under some leaves somewhere or something? I did not think any part of this place was intact, or renovated or…”

Stiles looked around further. He gave a sudden twitch of shock, and slowly his mouth dropped open. He stared at the vision on the wall immediately opposite him in complete astonishment. “Is that…that can’t be… WHAT is that?”

Derek followed his gaze and his manner seemed suddenly to become somewhat defensive. “I would have thought you of all people would recognise an original Star Wars poster.” Stiles was momentarily lost for words. Derek seemed to notice, and smiled. It was definitely a smile, a small one, but a smile. No leer. No undercurrent of smugness. No hostility. Stiles had never seen Derek do that. He felt warm all over, all of a sudden.

“I’m not allowed to like Star Wars?”

Stiles pulled his gaze away from Derek’s smile, with something of an effort. “I just never associated you with…”… he trailed off. 

“It was my favourite film when I was little. My parents bought me that for my tenth birthday. It was being reframed the night of the fire; I had cracked the glass in the old frame practising swings with my lacrosse stick…” Derek’s smile had taken on a distant, sadly reflective quality.

Stiles glanced around the room to stop him fixating on Derek’s face. Or on the steel framed image of Luke Skywalker with light sabre in hand. He took in some photographs standing on the bedside table, in a collection of leather frames. Hah! Leather would be right. There was a picture of what was clearly the Hale family with a younger Derek to the front. None of them were looking at the camera straight on, and Stiles realised it must be because of the eye flare. It created an oddly intimate image. He looked quickly away – it seemed like an intrusion to be looking. There was a picture of Laura – he recognised her, of course. Her face was something he would not forget in a hurry. His heart gave a jump when he saw the photo next to that – there was a picture of Scott and him in lacrosse gear at the end of a practice session, with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Allison was by Scott, all three were laughing. Stiles remembered the event – before Gerard, before … before everything. But he did not remember the photograph being taken. He did not remember Derek being there particularly. There was another candid shot of Stiles on his own, sitting in his room looking thoughtfully at his computer screen – which seemed to be a website on shape shifters. That must have been taken about four months ago, given the research topic, when Derek had spent an afternoon brooding in the corner of Stiles’s room while they tried to narrow down what they were dealing with. Why the hell had he taken the picture? There was one of Isaac, smiling shyly at someone out of shot – Stiles thought his gaze was probably directed towards Scott. Towards the back he thought he discerned a picture of Erica and Boyd. 

Stiles did not know what to say. 

“They are the people I care about”. Derek’s voice was soft; so quiet that Stiles almost had to strain to hear. 

There was a long silence. 

Eventually Derek shifted on the bed next to Stiles. “I need to clean that cut”. Stiles nodded. Something seemed to be stopping him from speaking at the moment. Derek moved and slowly pulled at Stile’s clawed-off sweat pants, gently removing them. Stiles was not entirely prepared for that and tensed, breathing shallowly and a little more rapidly. He could feel his heart rate accelerating. “This is going to sound weird” – Derek was sounding defensive, but firm – “but the most effective thing I can do to help clean the cut, reduce the pain and promote healing is to lick the wound.

Stiles gave something of a squeak, and then cleared his throat. “Ummm, sure. I mean, there is precedent. The crusaders in the Middle Ages used to take dogs with them to lick their battle wounds and help with the healing, so I guess…”

Derek positioned himself near Stiles’s right leg and slowly brought his mouth close to the wound. He glanced up, and Stiles met his eyes. Another flush of warmth ran through Stile’s body. Derek did not break eye contact as he gently put his tongue on Stiles’s leg and slowly worked his way up his thigh. He reached the top of the wound, and carried on an inch further towards Stiles’s hip, before moving back and repeating the motion. This time he ended up about an inch and a half above the wound, maintaining eye contact all the while.

As Derek’s mouth pulled away from Stiles’s thigh a second time, Stiles completely lost his mind. In a long history of saying stupid things at inappropriate times, he said the stupidest thing he had ever said.


	10. Workout (muscle groups)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As soon as he said it, Stiles knew he was dead. “Here lies Stiles Stilinski, good with Google, bad with timing.”

“Kiss me”

As soon as he said it, Stiles knew he was dead. “Here lies Stiles Stilinski, good with Google, bad with timing.” He wondered if Derek would let his body be found, or whether he would just end up buried in the woods. He hoped the body would be found; it would give closure for his father and friends. 

Derek stopped in his licking motion and stared up. “What?” There was a guttural quality to his voice, and Stiles’s heart gave a little leap. Was it possible that the luck of the Stilinskis had finally turned, and that there had been a temporary hiatus in werewolf hearing?

“I, err, I said….” Now he was sounding like Scott’s alpha voice, all squeaks and uncertainty.

“Did you just ask me to kiss you?”. Crap. The luck of the Stilinskis was running true to form, i.e. there was none. And now he was going to die.

“I, err, I said…”

There was a sudden movement and Stiles closed his eyes and hoped the end would be quick. Then he felt Derek’s hands on either side of his face, and Derek’s lips touched his very, very gently. Stiles’s eyes flew open in surprise and he saw Derek’s face straight in front of him. Stiles closed his eyes and hoped it would never end.

The kiss – holy Hell, Derek Hale was kissing him – stayed gentle. Sweet, almost chaste. No mouths open, no tongues. It was intimate, more intimate than Stiles had ever thought he would experience. It was an expression of trust, of complete faith, not of passion or desire. Stiles was melting into the kiss. It was so revealing, so emotionally open that Stiles felt as if he was crying in public. It was… Stiles thought “love” and then retracted. It could not be love. But it felt like it. And after an impossibility of ecstasy Derek pulled slowly back, breathing deeply through his mouth. He rested is forehead slightly against Stiles’s brow. “I have wanted to do that for so long” the alpha murmured.

Stiles reached a hand up, cautiously, to touch Derek’s cheek. “I, err, I said…”

“I thought I had hurt you. And my job is to protect you, to make sure nothing ever happens to you”. Derek’s tone was emotional, and the small part of Stiles mind that was always a free spirit, unfocused on the here and now, reflected that he had spent a lot of time talking to emotional alphas who wanted to protect him in the last 24 hours.

“Kiss me”. Stiles was definite, certain about this one point. There should be no misunderstanding, no room for miscommunication in those two syllables. 

Derek leant in, and the kiss started out as gentle as the last. But this time there was an undercurrent of passion. Stiles parted his lips as Derek gently pushed his tongue through, seemingly seeking to absorb the taste of Stiles, or the scent, or something. There was a forcefulness that caused Stiles’s heart to race. Stiles found his mouth, his lips, his tongue intimately intertwined with Derek. The kiss became more insistent, hungry, and Stiles could feel Derek pull himself up on the bed to get a better angle. There was an urgency to Derek’s movements now. Derek’s hands slid from the sides of Stiles’s face, where they had started out, and moved down his arms, curling round the back of Stile’s body slightly to close the gap between them. Stiles put one hand in Derek’s hair, the other on the back of Derek’s neck. It was a simple gesture, but it seemed to push Derek to a new height of passion. His breathing became more laboured and he broke away from the kiss to groan out “Stiles…”. It was not the normal growl Stiles was used to hearing from Derek. It was primal but more. There was desperation in it. Stiles could sense a longing that was barely restrained in Derek – mirroring a longing that was completely unrestrained in Stiles.

“I need to finish treating your leg, Stiles.” Derek seemed to be pulling back with an effort, and he kept his eyes locked with Stiles’s. “Let me finish treating you.”

Stiles nodded and watched as Derek slowly pulled himself down to Stiles’s thigh. He slowly licked up, to two inches above the top of the cut. A pause, and the motion was repeated. Derek’s tongue was now almost at the bottom edge of Stiles’s boxer briefs. Stiles was achingly aware of what was happening in those briefs, and there was no way he could hide it. His dick was erect in a way he had never known before, he was sure. The waistband of his briefs was being pushed away from his body by its force. There was an embarrassing amount of pre-cum soaking through the white material, just inches from Derek’s face. Stiles’s breathing was becoming more and more laboured. After a day and half of training, Derek must be used to hearing Stiles pant, but not like this. 

Derek suddenly wolfed out, and Stiles felt a surge of adrenalin course through his system. His whole body flushed with heat. Derek’s mouth closed down on the waistband of Stiles’s boxer briefs, and with a quick rending sound the material was gone. Stiles erection sprang free, just to the left of Derek’s face. Stiles looked down, past his hoodie (which had rucked up a little) and saw that the cut on his leg had half healed. Derek had reverted to his human face and was licking up his thigh again. 

Derek continued up past the cut, towards Stiles’s now exposed hip. Without pausing, his tongue continued towards Stiles’s dick. Stiles stomach muscles were twitching sensitively and he started gasping. Derek looked up at Stiles questioningly.

“God, Derek, just… just…”

Derek slowly moved to take the very tip of Stiles’s dick in his mouth. Stiles was slick with pre-cum and so hard it seemed painful. Derek slowly moved his tongue around the head of Stiles’s dick, with a light flickering motion – stealing and giving at the same time. Stiles was suddenly acutely aware that he had not jerked off for at least a day and a half – which must be the longest he had gone since he had discovered the full advantages of manual dexterity. He was going to cum in seconds.

“Derek, I am sorry, I’m…”

He was gasping in ecstasy, as Derek brought a hand to the base of his balls and gently tugged down on the skin. Stiles could feel his impulse to cum fade slightly, only to return as Derek took more of his dick into his mouth.

“Derek, I…”

Derek slid his mouth down, taking most of Stiles’s length into him. Stiles felt the warmth, the wet, the agile tongue finding nerve endings that Stiles had not ever discovered he had had. Derek began a slow movement up and down. Once, twice, a third time, and then Stiles suddenly arched his back.

“Derek, oh my God, Derek”

Stiles came with a violence he did not know he was capable of. Derek continued to suckle gently as Stiles spilled into his mouth. Stiles began to shudder as his orgasm – holy Hell, his orgasms, that had to be more than one – subsided. Derek swallowed, twice, and slowly crawled up the length of the bed to lie beside Stiles. Stiles was incapable of anything except gasps which sounded almost like dry sobs.

When he was calm, Derek kissed him again – gentle, intimate like the first time. Stiles felt emotionally raw. He had never been so uncontrolled with anyone before, even though the actual act had been embarrassingly fleeting. He would tell Derek anything, he was entirely open. Lying half naked next to the fully clothed alpha Stiles suddenly felt a shy vulnerability. He felt tired, in a good way, but also emotionally drained. It was weird; it was like he did not have the energy to put up a front any more, but also that he did not want to put on a front any more. There was no need to be the sarcastic, snarky, stupendous Stiles he always pretended. He did not need to pretend to be in control – because the last few minutes (the last ninety seconds, if he was to be honest) had clearly shown he was nowhere near being in control. For the first time in a very long time, Stiles could be who he was and not who other people wanted him to be or needed him to be. Stiles’s vision became a little blurry as he pulled the fingers of his right hand through the side of Derek’s hair, towards his face.

“Are you giving me an ear rub?” Derek’s voice was low and soft, and teasing. It was just so unreal.

Stiles kept pulling his fingers through Derek’s hair. “I am sorry, I could not…”. Stiles did not know how to apologise – he must appear so naïve, and it had all been over so quickly. He was suddenly aware that Derek’s erection was pressed into his thigh, almost bursting through the taut material his shorts. “Do you want me to???” – he took his hand from Derek’s hair and started to move down towards Derek’s waist.

Derek returned Stiles’s hand to its former position. “Just relax”.

Stiles lay there, pulling gently at Derek’s hair. He moved his other hand to brush at the tears on his eyelashes, when Derek slowly leaned in to catch the hand in one of his own, and kissed the moisture from each eye. Derek lay on top of Stiles, supporting his body weight on his elbows while allowing their bodies to touch through their clothes. The heat of Derek’s erection was discernible against Stiles’s inner thigh.

Slowly Derek brought one hand down to the base of Stiles’s hoodie, and moved it inch by inch up underneath the fabric. Derek pushed himself up into a sitting position, his legs straddling either side of Stiles’s hips, and he slowly and gently lifted the hem of the somewhat abused garment. Stiles lifted his arms, as Derek pulled it over his head, and threw it to one side before replacing his hands on Stiles’s body. 

Stiles was acutely aware that he was sprawled entirely naked beneath the alpha. His dick was half hard, and felt extraordinarily sensitive. Derek was staring down at him from his vantage point above Stiles’s hips. Slowly Derek’s hands began to move from the hips to the soft flesh that covered Stiles’s midriff. Derek leant forward, pushing his hand back down onto Stiles’s thighs, and bit – with human teeth – into the plump area of Stiles’s side, where the bite would normally go. Stiles groaned, and then felt his face flush.

“I…” he felt strangely self-conscious about his body in a way he had never done before.

Derek seemed to sense his embarrassment, as he snarled and moved with werewolf speed to cover Stiles’s mouth with his own. A violent kiss that must leave a bruise. Stiles gasped when he broke free, as Derek flashed the red of his alpha eyes down at him.

“You. Are. Beautiful. Perfect. You are the most alive person I have ever met. You connect with me, you get under my skin in a way that no one has ever, ever…” There was a remarkable amount of words coming out of Derek’s mouth, for someone so taciturn. “You are the most annoying, bewitching, enticing, funny, pain in the ass, devastating…” Derek paused. “You irritate the hell out of me, when I touch you my skin feels like electricity is running through it, your scent…” Derek swallowed again, seemingly giving in to some kind of intense internal struggle. 

“I… I love you, Stiles.”

Stiles was silent.


	11. Workout (Cardio Vascular)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I love you, Derek. I love the Derek you try to hide away” Stile murmured.

Stiles knew he must at best be concussed. Worst case in a coma. Or possibly insane – though if he could stay being insane and he could hear Derek telling him he loved him, it might be an acceptable compromise on reality. Sanity was overrated anyway, in Stiles’s opinion.

“I love you, Stiles.” 

There it was again, and it seemed to be so real. Stiles exhaled sharply, and his eyes began to fill with tears again. Words came pouring out of Stiles’s mouth in the way they always did when he had too much to say – he had to communicate, to tell Derek, and there was not enough time to say everything. The words were tripping over each other in his desperation to make Derek understand. “You know I love you too, right? I mean, the real you. I know you spend your time hiding behind a tough exterior of leather and stubble and pretending the world can’t hurt you any more” Derek huffed at him, and he seemed to be blinking very rapidly “and I love that you try to be strong for everyone else, but… I love the real you. I see what you are trying to do. I know the world still hurts you, all the time. I know you spend your life thinking you have to push people away to keep them safe from all the crap that follows you around, and then when things go wrong you leap in front of them to defend them – well, mainly you leap in front of me, I guess. I know you picked a pack of vulnerable people because you genuinely thought the bite would help them. I know you have tried to help Scott become a better wolf, a better alpha even though he would not take you as his alpha and even after we messed up and got you arrested. I know the risks you run for everyone else, the need you feel to protect everyone else, and…” Derek’s eyes began to glisten, and he leant down to bury his head in the crook of Stiles’s neck. Stiles knew it was because Derek was not yet ready to let Stiles see him cry. It would come, he would be ready in the future, Stiles was certain, but not just yet. 

“Every day after school, I check to see if you are in the parking lot, hoping just to get a glimpse of you. When I get home the first thing that I do is run to my room in case you are lurking in a corner of it. Even when Scott says that there is some new, lethal crap that is going to ruin our lives, my heart gives a leap because it means we might be working alongside you again.” Derek gave a stifled sob into Stiles’s shoulder. Stiles began to stroke at the back of Derek’s neck, making quiet soothing sounds. “I love you, Derek. I love the Derek you try to hide away” Stile murmured. They lay for a long while breathing in each other’s scents, listening to each other’s heartbeats.

Stiles felt his dick beginning to harden again, and Derek seemed capable of remaining erect for an eternity. Stiles slowed his stroking of the back of Derek’s neck. “Of course, I love your abs too….” Derek snorted into Stiles’s shoulder; his heart rate had slowed, and he seemed calmer – though his dick seemed to be more insistent. Stiles continued to push: “So, you really love a fat ass?”

Derek lifted his head and gave a softened version of Derek Hale glare number 4 (patent pending). His eyes were red rimmed, and Stiles had the briefest of moments of déjà vu from the previous night. Derek was speaking insistently, wanting to explain when explanations where not really necessary as far as Stiles was concerned. “I never meant that – the training was an excuse to be with you, touch you, look at you. I just want you to be safe, and in my world that means you have to be able to get to safety. I knew I could keep you safe when you were fast, but lately… the other night terrified me. It was so close, and if you could not be safe…”

“I know, Scott said much the same thing.”

“Is now the time to be bringing up Scott?”

Stiles grinned. “He is my alpha, after all. And he is my best friend who I love like a brother. You will have to accept that, if you are going to be my mate, and learn to deal with him…” Derek breathed out a noise of exasperation, but he seemed to show real pleasure at Stiles’s use of the word “mate”.

“However”, Stiles continued “I am on a road to better physical fitness, and I will continue with the training. Think of it as some kind of Buffy-esque spirit quest. In fact, I think I might be ready to try another exacting physical workout.”

Derek looked expectantly down at him. Stiles reached to tug off Derek’s top. He half managed it before Derek sprang up and pulled it off – to stand clad only in his lycra shorts. “Very nice, Miguel” Stiles murmured, earning himself a slight snarl in reply. Derek’s dick was straining against his lycra, and a dark patch of precum was visible even from where Stiles lay on the bed. Stiles raked his eyes up and down Derek’s torso, and then down a bit further. The shorts were doing nothing to disguise the size of Derek’s erection, or the ripples that seemed to be jolting his muscles. He really did not care about how Derek looked. But the way he looked was something of a bonus to the whole deal. Derek’s arm muscles flexed suddenly as he pulled at the waist of the shorts and rent the material apart. He stood defiantly naked, almost daring Stiles to comment on him, with his erection curving up towards the muscular ridges of his stomach. Stiles stared at him and began to hyperventilate. 

“Shall we work on your cardio-vascular fitness?” Derek suggested. Stiles moistened his lips slightly.

Derek disappeared through a doorway, leaving Stiles feeling bereft. He lay back on the bed, breathing heavily, his own erection bobbing around like a mast on a boat. Or a mast on an Ark. And there would have to have been two werewolves on the Ark, or at least a werewolf and a mate, because it was not fair otherwise. No one should ever have to go through life alone, ever… Derek seemed to be gone an eternity, and Stiles began to fear he had changed his mind, when suddenly he reappeared, carrying a tube of lube. Stiles moistened his lips again. He was not sure what was going to happen next, but he was sure it was going to be awesome. Awesome for him at least. 

Derek had already unscrewed the cap of the tube before he had come back into the bedroom, and he was squeezing lube into his hand. Gently he applied it up and down the length of Stiles’s dick. Stiles gave a sharp intake of breath at the touch, and almost whimpered as Derek reached the head. He hoped he would not cum again so soon. 

“Shush” whispered Derek. He applied a second portion of lube, slowly, deliberately, using his sense of touch while moving his mouth gently along Stiles’s treasure trail. Derek’s tongue flickered in and out, and he was taking small nips of Stile’s skin between groin and navel – not enough to break the skin, but enough to cause an involuntary reflex on Stiles’s part. Stiles gasped out “Derek” in a short pant of a breath.

With the same, slow deliberation Derek lifted his head and hauled himself onto the bed next to Stiles. Stiles could not help but notice the muscles on his arms writhing as Derek positioned himself. Derek kissed Stiles suddenly on the mouth as he sank into the pillows, pulling Stiles towards him. The action slowly rolled Stiles on top of Derek – his lubed erection pressed against Derek’s drier, hot length, with both erections pressed between their stomachs. Stiles kept his hands on Derek’s face as it lay beneath him. Derek, meanwhile slowly circled his hands down Stiles’s back, until – suddenly lifting them - he brought them down sharply with a slap on the two soft mounds of Stiles’s ass. Stiles hissed out in a swirled combination of pleasure and pain as he felt Derek’s nails – no, shit, those must be Derek’s claws, grip into the nubile flesh with an insistence that was at once possessive and pleading. “You have a very fine ass” Derek whispered into Stiles’s ear.

Stiles grinned and whispered back “A fat ass, apparently”

“But fine”

Stiles leant in to kiss Derek again, their dicks grinding insistently against each other. The hard muscle of Derek’s stomach was jumping involuntarily, sending shivers of electricity up Stiles’s spine. Derek broke away from the kiss again.

“Fuck me” he said.

Stiles stared. “What?”

“You heard.”

“But…”

“Stiles”. There was something of the old impatience in the way Derek growled out Stiles’s name, and then Derek sighed, and pushed slightly at Stiles’s shoulders. Derek spread his legs wider and wriggled further up the pillows. “It will probably be easier if you stand.”

Stiles eased himself off the edge of the bed, unsure if his legs would support him. Derek lay on his back, his ass at the edge of the bed and his legs spread wide. Stiles could see the lubed softness of his hole as Derek spread himself over the edge of the mattress.

“Stand between my legs”. Derek was gently guiding Stiles in. “Hold onto my thighs”.

Stiles gripped Derek’s things in his hands. It was like grasping granite. Warm granite. Lava. No, that did not make sense…

“Stiles” 

Stiles focused his attention. His erection stood so high it was almost touching the soft swelling of his stomach. 

“Push my legs up”. Stiles moistened his lips again, and did as he was asked. The hard contours of Derek’s ass mesmerised Stiles for a moment. The way the muscle pulled in below his hips. The raw power and strength Stiles could sense beneath the surface of the skin. Stiles’s dick was leaking so much precum that for a moment Stiles feared he had exploded without noticing “And gently push your way in…”

Stiles looked at Derek. “Should I use my fingers, or what? I am not really sure… I mean, I know the theory, and I have done some research and seen some quite educational films, but I am not…” Stiles could feel the faint tightening in his chest that was a prelude to a panic attack. He so much wanted to get this right, and he knew he was going to get this wrong and Derek would never speak to him again and his life would be over.

“Relax. I have done the prep for you – just this once.”

Stiles slowly positioned his dick at the entrance to Derek’s hole, which he could see already glistening with lube in the early afternoon sun, and gently moved further in. The closeness and warmth almost overwhelmed him, and he closed his eyes. The tightness in his chest was still there. He was going to mess this up. He was going to cum in seconds.

Suddenly Derek drew a long, drawn intake of breath, with a sharp hiss. Stiles’s eyes flew open and he stared down at him “what have I done wrong? I’ll pull out, I’m sorry Derek, I never meant…”

Derek’s stomach muscles flexed and he pulled his head closer to Stiles, lifting his body off the bed with a violent energy that took Stiles by surprise. Derek’s legs wrapped round Stiles’s body keeping Stiles’s dick in place and not allowing him to carry out his threat.

“Don’t you dare” Derek moaned out “fuck me. I… want you… to… fuck me. Oh God, please Stiles… I need to feel…”. Derek was begging.

Stiles stood, mouth agape, his dick two thirds of the way into Derek, without moving.

“Stiles, damn it, fuck me.” There was less begging, more ordering in Derek’s tone, but the voice was authority driven by desperate desire, not by expectation of gratification. “I need to feel you deep inside me. Don’t punish me like this, please. Stiles, you must…”

Stiles thrust tentatively in – the tightness around him was impossible, the warmth of Derek was engulfing him. He thrust further, apprehensive, far from smooth, and slowly pulled back for a second thrust. Derek was writhing slightly, his hands clawing for Stiles’s ass, his dick jerking back and forth with a combination of Stiles’s movement and some kind of muscle spasm of its own. Derek’s eyes were closed, tightly closed. Stiles could not believe he had reduced Derek to this.

He thrust again, and again. Derek gave up trying to grab hold of Stiles’s ass and put his hands behind him to support his torso, his legs now bent back as Stiles pushed in harder. Stiles was mesmerised by the hard, lean muscle of Derek’s body. Every tremor, every movement that was unfolding in front of him was a private show just for him. Derek’s eyes were open now, erratically but greedily devouring everything they could of Stiles - his face, his body – taking in his chest, the small line of fur of his treasure trail, the sinful red of his lips, the plump swelling of his stomach which was now bumping against the back of his thighs. The softly repeated slap of Stiles’s body against the back of Derek’s legs was an obscene, addictive, compelling sound, and it seemed to push Derek to the very edge.

“Fuck, Stiles, help me please. I can’t… Oh God, there, again, there… I can’t hold on…. Please”

Stiles thrust again, and reaching forward put his right hand over Derek’s dick. It was drenched in precum, and Stiles was suddenly very conscious of how long Derek had been erect. Derek’s dick was warm even to the already warm Stiles, and pulsing with Derek’s excitement. Stiles had barely grasped the tip and given it a slight squeeze, moving his thumb gently, instinctively over the top, before Derek exploded. Stiles squeezed again, with a firm insistence, while slowing the pace of his thrusting as a great spurt of cum shot out onto Derek’s washboard abs and up to the muscular swell of his chest. Derek was sweating – the first time Stiles had seen him ever do that, in spite of the heat and the training of the past two days. He was murmuring incoherently. Stiles slowed his thrusts still further, though he wanted so much to continue.

“No” Derek sounded weak, almost faint. “No, I want you…. Oh, God…” Stiles was still squeezing, gently now, on Derek’s dick and apparently this was now getting overly sensitive “I want… God Stiles, I want you to cum inside me.”

Derek seized both of Stiles’s hands in one of his, to prevent any further manipulation of his own dick, and seemed to squeeze the internal muscles that held Stiles’s dick in their thrall. Stiles gasped out, and thrust deeper as Derek lifted his hips slightly further. Stiles thrust again, and again, his enthusiasm making his whole body quiver as he drove his soft, yielding flesh against the muscular contours of Derek’s ass. Derek seemed to be beside himself – wanting to grab all of Stiles at once, and not knowing where to grab first. Stiles could sense the frantic, passionate tension in Derek – all of Derek’s visible muscles were straining with effort – and Stiles responded by pulling his hands from Derek’s grasp to seize the sculpted solidity of the alpha’s legs. Derek was pushing against him now, his softening dick lying in the sticky mess that smeared his abs, as Stiles suddenly came in an explosion of heat. He thrust one more time, his eyes closed and his breathing painfully gasps of ecstasy.

“Derek, I….”

Stiles’s legs could not hold him. He pulled out slowly, and pulled himself to collapse on top of Derek using the force of his arms alone. “Derek, I am sorry, I must have been awful. You must tell me how to be better, how to make you…”

Another savage kiss to his face, as Derek pulled Stiles firmly into him

“That was unbelievable. You are unbelievable. I have never felt anything like that before… never.” Derek grabbed at Stiles’s butt with both hands, his strong and slightly clawed fingers sinking into the soft flesh as he pulled Stiles’s sensitive and flushed body closer to him.

Stiles looked at him, but saw only an open honesty in the werewolf’s eyes.

Derek half rose from the bed. “Stay here, I’ll get something to clean us up”

“No, I want… I just want to hold you”. It was what Stiles needed; Derek, and Derek’s comforting warmth, in his arms.

Derek smiled, a quiet half smile that Stiles knew only he would get to see, and leant in to kiss Stiles gently again. “OK”. He back lay back down beside Stiles, gently raising a hand to run down his side from arm to ass, legs intertwined with his. And in that intricately interlinked position, each gently stroking the other and gazing at the other’s face, they fell asleep.

An hour later, Stiles half woke as a stray beam of sunlight came through the western window of the room. Derek lay next to him, eyes closed, breathing deeply, and looking younger than he had ever seen him. Stiles was so used to thinking of Derek as the responsible alpha adult, he sometimes forgot that he was only a few years older. Their legs were still intertwined, and Stiles had his arm across Derek’s waist. Stiles smiled, moved a little closer so that the tip of his nose just brushed against Derek’s, and drifted off back to sleep.


	12. Warmdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well, you see Scott, when a daddy werewolf and a daddy Stiles love each other very much…”

Stiles strolled up to his house with a broad smile on his face. He was wearing a pair of Derek’s sweatpants – his own dusky pink claw-offs had been beyond repair, and his underwear had been metaphorically, or very possibly literally scattered to the four winds – but the hoodie had survived without further damage. He felt tired, but good tired. When he and Derek had woken, with the late afternoon sunlight, dappled through the leaves on the trees outside the window and falling onto the tangled mass of bodies and bedding, he had been the one who had insisted on some further exercise. Proper exercise. Because naked sit ups were better that fully clothed sit ups, obviously.

“There is precedent for this too, you know” Stiles had observed on his twentieth sit up. “Ancient Greek athletes…”

Derek had then pushed at his shoulders to get him to complete the sit up. He had been standing, naked, on Stile’s feet, insisting that Stiles touch his knees each time, and absolutely insisting that Stiles did not pay any attention to Derek’s very eye-catching erection.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice the whole ‘dog saliva’ comment earlier” he had growled.

“Basic historical fact” Stiles had observed. “And I am going to have to do something about general health and safety around here” – Derek had suddenly looked mortified.

“I’ll fix the stairs” he had begun quickly.

“I was thinking more about the risks of being poked in the eye” Stiles had commented, sitting up fully before he had taken Derek’s dick in his mouth.

Stiles smiled again at the recollection, wrapping his arms around himself as if to contain his uncontrolled happiness.

 

Stiles showered slowly, noticing that the cut on his leg had healed to a red mark – vivid against the paleness of his skin but hardly serious. He stepped out, and was rubbing his hair with a towel as he stepped into his bedroom. There was a gasp as he entered. Stiles pulled the towel from his head, and quickly clutched it to his groin, until he realised it was only Scott. He let the towel drop to the floor.

“Dude, a little warning? Bark, or something, to announce your presence. Or, you know, yap like a poodle.”

“What is that on your leg?” Scott asked, pointing at Stiles’s cut – hair started sprouting at Scott’s cheeks, and his canines were lengthening clearly. “He hurt you?”

“Bro, no, calm down – I slipped and cut myself.”

Scott seemed partially pacified, until Stiles half turned to grab a pair of jeans. There was a growl – finally, that was an alpha type sound – and an angry cry. “What did he do?”

Stiles was a little confused by this. He twisted his head to try and look behind him, before realising that there were claw marks marring his curvaceous ass – and perhaps one or two on his back. Derek had seemed to get especially excited when gripping the soft flesh of Stiles’s butt cheeks – it brought out the wolf in him. The claw marks did not hurt, as there may or may not have been some alpha wolf healing licks to the afflicted area, but they were quite unmistakable.

“Crap.”

Explanations were going to have to be offered a little earlier than he had anticipated.

“Scott, calm down, Derek has done nothing to hurt me. Honest. Well, apart from making me do sit ups.”

Scott slowly morphed back, in the face of Stiles’s complete unconcern and steady heartbeat, but he was not happy. He stood by Stiles’s desk, breathing hard. “Are you sure you are not hurt? You look hurt. Those look like claw marks”

Stiles pulled on his jeans, and sat on his bed.

“Well, you see Scott, when a daddy werewolf and a daddy Stiles love each other very much…”

Scott’s face was a picture of confusion. Stiles waited a moment to give him a chance to process. It was possibly quite a lot of information to be taking in all in one go.

“… then they have a special form of kissing that they like to try. They take off their clothes…”

There it was, a slow dawning realisation beginning to break across Scott’s features.

“..and they take a special lubricating liquid…”

Comprehension was quickly being chased away by horror

“…and they”

“STILES”. 

“Now you see Scotty boy, that is far more the tone an alpha should be striving for.” Stiles grinned wickedly. He felt he would never be able to stop grinning. 

He loved Derek. And through some weird Karma payback for the luck of the Stilinskis, Derek loved him. 

“Stiles”

“Yes, oh alpha, my alpha”

“Stiles”

“Scott, much as I love the riveting intellectual cut and thrust of your conversation, you might want to move beyond the one word, even when that word is as awesome sounding as my name.”

“Stiles, you… you… you…”

“Progress Scott. Two words now. Try for three”

Scott appeared to have reached the limit of his vocabulary for now, however. He grabbed at the back of Stiles’s desk chair, not noticing his half clawed out hands tearing at the covers again. Stiles sighed inwardly. More duct tape would be needed it seemed. 

“Yes, Scott. I love Derek. Derek, obviously, loves me. I mean, who could not love this bundle of fun and stupendousness?”

“And you…”

“And we…”

“And you…”

“Yes. I could show you a picture?” Stiles made as if to reach for his Samsung phone. Scott quickly held out a restraining hand, which at least got his claws out of Stiles’s long suffering desk chair.

“And you are OK. He didn’t…” Scott was trying to find words “he didn’t force you to…”

“He forced me to do all sorts of unnatural acts, and bullied me into the weirdest positions you could possibly imagine. But when we had finished with the program of press-ups and sit-ups and suicide runs, we went up to the bedroom and made mad and passionate love. Several times. In several different positions. Which I forced him into. Derek likes to be the bot…”

Scott looked ever more horrified. “DUDE! I never, ever want that degree of information about you in bed, EVER”

Stiles just kept grinning.

“And then…”

Scot put his fingers in his ears and began humming tunelessly to himself.

“Yeah, like that is going to work with werewolf hearing. Stop being an idiot and rub my shoulders, will you?”

 

 

Stiles lay face down on is bed, as Scott rubbed the ache in his shoulders. Scott was still processing – Stiles knew it would take a while.

“You really love him?”

“I really do. I have the strangest taste in werewolves, it would seem.”

“And you are happy?”

“Dude, I feel happier than I have ever felt. In fact, I am going to tell you a secret”

“I thought I was clear. I don’t EVER want to know about you in bed with Derek.”

“Not what I meant – though you will be angry with me when I tell you.”

Scott apprehensively paused in his rubbing, as if preparing to put his hands over his ears to block out intimate details. Stiles continued with complete unconcern.

“I think I am happier with Derek than you are with Allison.”

Scott snorted disagreement to register the impossibility of such thing, but then slowly started his rubbing again. “You really think you have something like Allison and me.”

“I do”

Scott suddenly leant down and impulsively hugged Stiles. “I am so happy for you bro. You deserve it. But if he ever mistreats you…” Scott tensed, clearly still thinking of the claw marks, as his fingers traced a long scratch at the base of Stiles’s spine. “You mean it? You love him”

“Yes”. For once Stiles was still, serious, and calm. Scott seemed convinced. He hugged Stiles again, and Stiles felt a distinct strong intake of breath from Scott as his nose brushed back and forth at the back of Stiles’s neck. For the love of God….

Scott slowly pushed up and resumed his pain leaching. Stiles was not going to let this one go, however.

“What do I smell like?”

“I am not going to tell you”

“I told you yours - your pine, resin, new leaf smell. Come on, spill bro. I told you yours, so you tell me mine”

Scott shifted uncomfortably next to Stiles for a moment.

“You smell like energy – a bright ball of energy”

“Well, duh”

“Maybe what a very bright lightbulb would smell like. And…”

Scott broke off, and Stiles twisted round to see him getting red in the face

“…and?”

“And you smell like my Snuggy.” Scott muttered, barely audible.

“I beg your pardon?” Stiles’s grin was widening still further – seriously he was going to do damage to his facial muscles after today. 

“You smell like my Snuggy blanket. From when I was five.”

“From when you were seven and a half, or maybe eight, I seem to remember”.

Scott glared at him. “You smell reassuring, and comforting, and safe, and protecting, and being dependable OK?” He was trying for dignified defiance, and not doing a very good job of it. “Only now you smell like my Snuggy blanket after it has been on a radiator on a cold winter evening. You smell hotter.”

There was that hotter scent again. Derek definitely smelled hotter all today, and now it appeared he did. Scott’s train of thought seemed to be on a similar track.

“I had the same weird hotter smell off Isaac today as well. His scent, but hotter. Is it the betas of a different pack?” Scott suddenly stopped his shoulder rub and sounded panicked “Have you gone over to Derek’s pack?”

“No, of course not Scott. You are the alpha, I am your consigliere. I would never leave you. Though you are going to have to start being nice to my mate”.

The shoulder rub started again and Scott’s voice contained more than a hint of relief. “Then what is it? Have you noticed me ever smelling hotter?”

“Good point” mused Stiles. Scott had not really changed scent since Stiles had acquired the ability to pick up on it. He did not have any sense of increased heat coming off him, he never had. 

Hmmmm. Heat.

“Dude, how often do you think about Allison?”

“Stiles, I told you I am here for you every evening this week. It is cool.”

“And I love you for it, as long as you keep with the rubbing program. But even when you are here you still think about her, don’t you?”

“I think about her all the time” Scott said simply.

Stiles pulled himself half up on the bed and looked at Scott intensely. “Can you think about her a bit more? Concentrate on her”. Scott looked surprised, but almost involuntarily his eyes glazed a little. And there it was. Stiles could detect a slightly hotter scent of Scott coming off his body. He could not normally tell that Scott smelled hotter, because had Scott always smelled hotter ever since Stiles had had his first magic fairy dust experience, because Scott was always thinking about Allison. Perhaps if Stiles had been gifted with nasal superpowers a year ago he would have noticed the change to a hotter smell from Scott when Scott fell for Allison, but as it was...

Just to be sure, because Stiles was all about empirical testing, he sat up fully and shook Scott’s bare shoulder. “Buddy, pay attention a moment. Can you tell if my scent gets less hot?”

Scott looked at Stiles with some confusion. Stiles focused his mind – not Derek. Not Derek. Greenberg. That would do. Greenberg. Greenberg. Greenberg. Greenberg.”

Scott broke in excitedly. “Just then, you smelt less hot. Still Stiles, but less hot.” 

Stiles breathed out in satisfaction and relief. Satisfaction at solving the mystery, and relief that he could change the picture in his mind. Derek. Derek naked. Derek naked, on his bed with his legs open. Derek parting his lips, and…

“DUDE”

Stiles came back to the here and now. “It’s heat” he said. 

“Yes”. Scott did not seem impressed by this amazingly insightful conclusion. “You smelt hotter.”

“No, heat like dogs on heat. The smell comes from desire. Arousal. But more than that. A desire to mate? Something more enduring. More permanent. More…epic. Not so much TV series as international blockbuster film.”

Scott just looked confused by the analogy, then horrified “Tell me you and Derek did not make a sex film”. 

Stiles ignored him, though the detached part of his brain was starting down a dangerous road. The main part of Stiles’s brain pondered on his theory some more. It made sense. The bond between two people, at least like Scott and Allison’s bond or his bond with Derek, made things more intense, more passionate. It must alter their scent. But this did mean something else. He turned to Scott, threw an arm across his bare shoulders and gave him a squeeze.

“Dude, we need to talk about Isaac.”


	13. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hold on” interjected Stiles. “Derek is Princess Leia. He totally rocks the gold bikini look.”

Epilogue - three months later

 

Stiles liked a certain order to his life. His mind was not chaotic - random, yes, but once the random choice was made he liked to move along organised paths. It was what made him so good at research. Once he had landed on a course of action he would pursue it relentlessly. A certain structure to his life was necessary. Thus, Thursday night was pack night, conveniently after lacrosse practice (which meant Scott could leach away any pain). Friday night was date night, which meant just what it said. And Saturday night was the High Council of the Alphas; or, as Derek would insist on calling it, “movie night”. 

Stiles’s father was working the Saturday night shift, and was moving slowly towards the front door – collecting keys, belt, jacket in a haphazard manner as he went. Stiles caught up with him as he stood on the threshold.

“Dinner” – he held out a brown bag.

Sheriff Stilinski raised an eyebrow.

“Chicken salad with a low fat dressing on the side. And a banana and fruit juice” Stiles reeled off. “And if you sneak off to the café on the corner to get brownies like you did last night I WILL find out and there WILL be retribution.” 

“How on earth?”

“Seriously, dad. Your deputies are more terrified of me than of you. They know I will not stop bombarding them with texts if they do not report every transgression on your part.”

Stiles did not mention that there were two Reese’s peanut butter cups in with the salad and fruit in the bag. Let his dad be surprised. Although of course his dad should not be surprised by the awesomeness of Stiles.

The Sheriff sighed a long, drawn out sound of intolerable suffering. “Bye Stiles, behave tonight.” 

Stiles grinned. “When do I ever not?”

The Sheriff looked at him. “Right.” He raised his voice a little – “Bye Derek, enjoy movie night”. Derek’s slightly muffled reply came from the couch in front of the TV, as the Sheriff turned and left.

Stiles disappeared to the kitchen, to check on the home made pizza in the oven. Another ten minutes. He drifted in to the family room and glanced towards Derek as he lay stretched out on the couch. Stiles knew that the sound of his heart giving a small leap would be perfectly audible to Derek, but there was no point trying to pretend to keep anything secret around his boyfriend. Not that he wanted to, anyway. Derek smiled – his shy half smile that he only ever used with Stiles. Stiles moved over to stand by him, and gently pushed his hand through Derek’s thick hair.

The doorbell rang, and Stiles pulled his hand free, and bent to kiss Derek on the top of his head before heading to answer it. Allison was giggling as Stiles pulled the door open, and Scott was hastily standing up straight with a somewhat flushed face. Stiles gave a look of mock exasperation at them.

“Hey Stiles” Allison was attempting a look of innocent decorum, which was somewhat offset by the start she gave as Scott slid his hand behind her back. “You look especially stylish tonight”. The comment was a loaded one, and there was a slight questioning look on her face.

“Lydia” Stiles said. “She insists on updating my wardrobe, and now I have all these fitted T-shirts and tops. And she won’t let me have a Batman logo on ANY of them.”

“The girl loves a fashion project” Allison said, dragging Scott with her as she passed Stiles. “And I am sure Derek appreciates the look.”

“And the way those jeans flatter your fine ass” Scott whispered audibly to Stiles, with an evil grin in the direction of Derek, who made a half-hearted growl of protest at him from the couch.

“Behave” said Stiles, as Allison used her free hand to smack Scott on the back of his head. “Go sit down, and I’ll bring through the pizza”. 

 

Settling down in front of the television, the remains of the pizza before them, Stiles reached for the remote, and booted up the DVD. Scott and Allison were curled up in the opposite corner of the couch, as Stiles snuggled up to where Derek was sprawled as the “Return of the Jedi” opening title began to scroll.

“My Yoda you will be” Scott muttered at Stiles, who threw a cushion at him

“Sorry Allison. Lack of hunter coordination in missile throwing. And I am totally Obi-Wan.”

“Does that make Scott Luke?” Allison asked. Scott flushed a little.

“Darth Vader, according to Stiles.”

“Only when you steal my chocolate. And there is the whole Chewbacca thing. Though you are more like an Ewok a lot of the time.” Derek snorted a laugh behind Stiles, his chest rising against Stiles’s back as he pulled him closer.

“And you are obviously Princess Leia to my Hans Solo” said Scott with a kiss to Allison.

“Hold on” interjected Stiles. “Derek is Princess Leia. He totally rocks the gold bikini look.” Derek nipped at Stiles’s ear in an attempt at irritation.

“Eugh.” Scott seemed totally distraught at the idea. “No, Stiles, don’t even…”

“Like you never wore women’s clothes? I remember when you were six…”

“Do tell?” there was the sound of a smirk in the inflection of Derek’s voice, and Allison was looking across at Stiles with glee.

“Dude! Seriously! I forbid you to tell” Scott’s face flooded with heat and his eyes widened in horror.

“I will keep a discreet silence, for now” Stiles said “But only because we are bros. That alpha command tone of yours still needs work… you sound like a red setter, it just makes me want to pat your head or rub your tummy or something.”

Derek tightened his arm around Stiles “If there is any tummy rubbing going on, it will not be Scott’s tummy that is being rubbed”.

Stiles grinned at Scott – “You see? That is an alpha command voice. Not that I ever pay any attention to Derek either, of course”. Scott pushed a leg out along the couch in a half-hearted attempt to kick Stiles, while staying snuggled with Allison. Stiles just pulled himself tighter to Derek, his right leg nestled between Derek’s thighs. 

“Derek, Derek, save me from the big, bad wolf” Stiles said, in a falsetto tone. 

“I am trying my best to scare the crap out of you” Scott growled, attempting to make his voice drop an octave lower.

“Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.” Stiles quoted. “Did you not learn the lesson of last week’s High Council of the Alphas movie, young Skywalker?”

“Shut up and watch the movie” growled Derek. He moved a hand down to Stile’s waist, and slowly pushed up underneath his Lydia selected T-shirt, stroking his fingers along the flat muscled planes of Stiles’s stomach in a gentle, tender motion. His little finger slipped discretely under the waistband of Stiles’s jeans, and Stiles could sense a little juddering movement across Derek’s body as Derek realised Stiles was not wearing underwear.

“Do you want me to cover your eyes when we get to the bit with the scary Sarlacc?” whispered Stiles, which provoked a snort of laughter from Scott – a muffled snort as his face was buried in Allison’s neck. Derek huffed an annoyed sound into the top of Stile’s head, but he slipped a second finger beneath the waistband of Stiles’s jeans at the same time. Stiles knew he would pretend to cover Derek’s eyes with his hands during the Sarlaac scene anyway, and he knew that Derek would pretend to be irritated and would growl. But he also knew that Derek had been scared by that part when he was little, and he would probably have his eyes closed underneath Stiles’s hands. 

Four warm scents rose from the couch as the opening scenes of the movie unfolded. Stiles raised his head slightly in order to gently kiss the side of Derek’s neck, and as he did so he breathed in Derek’s new scent – dense woods still, smoky too, but more patches of sunlight than the old dour smell of decay. Stiles knew Derek liked Stiles to kiss him like that. Because Stiles knew Derek.

 

 

Fin

 

Thanks to everyone who commented and left kudos. My first attempt (ever) at fan fic etc., and so the encouragement and comments were very much appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> I know Stiles is not fat - this is assuming he put on a few pounds (not too many) after the end of Season 2. Bear with me for the good stuff...


End file.
